May 2003 Les Grooms - The Threepenny
Ring - Perth Festival Golden Anniversary
The fabulous Götterdämmerung performances were not the only
Wagner on offer during this year's 50th Festival in Perth. I was lucky
enough to catch the final performance of a French busking group called
Les Grooms [Bellboys] who promised - and delivered - the entire Ring
Cycle in 78 minutes, including one of the most impressive apocalypses
I've ever seen! This performance took place two nights before Götterdämmerung
in Mandurah's Boardwalk theatre - about an hour's drive south
of Perth. It came close to trumping the Golden Anniversary Götterdämmerung
performance. Strictly speaking, the performance was in the back
stage area under a tent that accommodated about 300 people sitting
on the floor or chairs.
We were ushered into this unexpected venue by the eight Bellboys
themselves, dressed in uniforms donated to them in an hour of need
by a Parisian hotel that was changing its corporate style.
They are very fetching red double-breasted jackets with gold buttons,
black pants and the traditional bellboy round cap. The jackets and
caps were soon abandoned as the group threw itself into the challenge
of retelling the entire Ring story in 78 minutes. Lest you think that
this was a frivolous "send up" of the Ring, the work was
commissioned by a representative of The Barbican Theatre, who had
seen one of the group's previous pieces, The Tragic Flute, and wanted
them to create a similar piece to promote a forthcoming production
of the Ring at The Barbican (autumn 2004).
Les Grooms has been together since 1983, "springing" as
the program says, "from the enclave of Théātre de l'Unité ["Since
1972, purveyors of provocative theatre"!!] in St Quentin-en-Yveslines.
Their repertoire of "music, which is designed for concert halls,
but which is performed in the streets", is eclectic. The Threepenny
Ring "began its life at the festival of Chalon dans la rue and
has now been seen in France, the UK, Belgium, Holland, South Korea,
South Africa, the Reunion Islands, Algeria and Canada", before
arriving in Mandurah.
All the Bellboys (assisted by a small number of others) play and
sing - very well. Most of the music was performed on brass instruments,
including a Wagner tuba, supplemented by a small drum kit, musical
saw, harmonica, didgeridoo and saxaphone. Their approach to the music
of the Ring was eclectic, but also highly imaginative, provocative
and effective.
From the Prelude to Das Rheingold, with all the instruments
listed above playing, through Siegmund and Sieglinde's love duet as
a Latin American-cum- Tijuana brass number, the Ride of the Valkyries
as a mixture of Arabian belly dance, quick march and pastiche of Bernstein's
song "America" from Westside Story', Brünnhilde's "Annunciation
of Death" to Siegmund as a plangent sax blues number, to the
Brünnhilde "Please forgive me" tango to Wotan's "I
forgive you" cha-cha-cha, and the Prelude to Siegfried on a solo,
blues harmonica , the magic fire on the musical saw, Yiddish folk
tunes and contemporary Jewish klezmer, the music was not just an amusing,
virtuosic demonstration of the arranger's chutzpah.
The arrangements picked up an element of the story or character and
gave it a twist that threw new light on the meaning. The Brünnhilde
"Please forgive me" tango is a good case, since the tango
was very slow and soulful, reinforcing Brünnhilde's emotions at this
point. To underscore their seriousness about the musical value, the
group hired two young, professional singers to sing Siegmund and Sieglinde,
Siegfried and Brünnhilde straight (which they did very well, given
what was happening around them!), even if the music accompanying them
had been arranged into some more exotic form. After the performance,
one of the performers explained to me that the music had been the
main concern of the group. They wanted to make their political and
social points through the music, hence the reference, through the
work's title, to Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht's The Threepenny
Opera.
The arranger, Antoine Rosset, to balance Wagner's anti-Semitism,
introduced Yiddish folk and klezmer elements, suggesting that, one
way or another, reality would reassert itself despite Wagner's racist
fantasies. In the words of M Rosset: "Let's tear it away from
Bayreuth and from its family. This two-centuries old music is public
property. It belongs to everybody. Let's have fun with it...the whole
Ring in less than one and a half hours...Let's make a concentrated
version of this Wagnerian material, spiced with oriental scales and
klezmer rhythms, and blow a raspberry at the avowed anti-Semitism
of our dear Richard". Similarly, the group took its dramatic
approach from Brecht's theory of "alienation" - insisting
on a "critical distance" between the audience and performers/
performance so that the audience would have to think about the dramatic
illusion that it was experiencing to avoid being seduced by it.
The performance in a tent in the backstage of a theatre was a brilliant
coup de théātre - it completely disrupted my expectations of going
to the theatre that Once the audience was inside, the Grooms performed
in, around, behind, above and below the audience, sometimes pulling
out unsuspecting member to play a part or to shine the spots and hold
props. The running joke of the night also kept breaking the illusion
- and the audience up: regularly, one of the performers would break
out of character to say we are now an hour or two hours or four hours
and ten minutes, etc into the story!
The tricks Les Grooms used to tell the story were as varied, imaginative
and effective as the musical arrangements. There were so many ingenious
solutions to presenting the scenes that I couldn't begin to list them
all. Suffice it to mention using handpuppets for the Nibelungen complete
with tiny anvils, introducing an Indonesian Wayankulit or shadow play
for the ride of the Valkyries and the journey of Siegfried and the
Woodbird, having all the members of the band sink into erotic embraces
during Siegfried and Brünnhilde's love duet, Brünnhilde vacuuming
with the didgeridoo before she sends the layabout out-of-work Siegfried
out on his journey, or dressing Hagen in a full-length leather coat
(Matrixstyle) which he opens during his call to the vassals to reveal
them all as mannikins stitched into the inside of his coat. The giants
were indescribably clever and funny, under a big hessian sack, with
a French horn as the head and two mutes as eyes!!
The troupe employed an impressive range of acting styles, gestures
and a strong ensemble approach with performers switching roles without
a pause. This ensured that the basic storylines were conveyed accurately
and with as much detail as could be packed into 78 minutes. The group
selected major scenes from each opera as the frame on which to hang
the multicoloured clothes of their musical and dramatic reworking
of Wagner's epic. The program also proposed that: "Wagner is
preceded by his reputation: loved by the converted, but detested by
those who don't know him. Where would we position ourselves? How could
we popularise Wagner? And what about the politics? And the Nazi connotations:
could we ignore that? After much discussion and differing interpretations,
we have decided, in the context of a show which is destined for a
wide public:
- That ears unaccustomed to Wagner need some help to appreciate
the music.
- That it would be unthinkable to ignore all that which is associated
with Wagner's work. Which is why we will try to come at the work
from a suitable angle, one which will be at the same time serious
and playful."
If proof were needed that The Grooms' work is an appreciation of
Wagner's music and his role in western culture, I simply refer you
to the inspired, aweinspiring ending. As the band belted out Siegfried's
funeral music, the audience was guided out of the tent to form a circle
around it. As we listened to the march meld into a perfectly straight
version of Brünnhilde's immolation, we all gasped as the tent collapsed
then merged into billows of smoke lit by red spots as Valhalla burned.
Then some troupe members under the collapsed tent created the waves
of the Rhine. The audience stood spellbound as the final bars of "Brünnhilde's
glorification" wafted into the flys of the Boardwalk backstage.
The enthusiasm of the ovation, of necessity standing, was unbounded
and well deserved.
Les Grooms told me that they are hoping for an invitation to Sydney
or to Adelaide for the 2004 Ring Cycle. I, for one, will be supporting
their return in any way I can and will go almost anywhere to see this
performance again.
[Ed. March 2003]
This Page was last updated on:
10-Mar-2004
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