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NBR NZ Opera is on the road. Michael Hurst's hi-energy production of Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel premiered to a full house in Kerikeri on Sunday night and is ready to take on the country.
Hurst injects a touch of grand guignol panto into this classic fairytale opera and
his cast of five play it to the hilt. Anna Pierard and Ana James make a terrific twosome as Hansel and Gretel, hoofing around stage, dreaming of food, glorious food. Humperdinck's musical demands are effortlessly met by the women who respond like seasoned troupers to Hurst's endlessly inventive stage play.
It may jolt traditionalists having the children's parents demonised. James Harrison's Father, a good broom-making bloke in the original, is now a "rotten skunk who's come home drunk", as described by Helen Medlyn's manic Mother, a fury in beehive and 60s cocktail dress. Medlyn and Harrison may be wayward parents but it makes for gripping drama and Medlyn's shrew is a clever hint of what awaits us when the mezzo plays the Witch.
Cackling on demand, sucking in her breath with cannibalistic anticipation, Medlyn the Mahlerian brings authority to the demanding music Humperdinck wrote for this Brunnhilde on a broomstick. Her manic hopping aria, with David Eversfield dropping the lights to expressionist level, brings the house down.
John Verryt's visuals are as ingenious as they are effective. The distorted perspective of the cottage interior with raked stage and jug-on-a-plinth could be a Terry Stringer sculptural installation; his cookie-curtain of a gingerbread house gives us our first glimpse of Medlyn's Nosferatu fingernails.
Barbara Graham's Dew Fairy presides over a glistening tableau in Act 3, while the Dream Pantomime has Hurst and Verryt going Baroque in their stylised treatment of one of the opera's most resonant moments.
Holding the musical reins is the able Tecwyn Evans, although even with the best intentions and niftiest baton work in the world, a valiant band of 15 cannot catch the detail and impact of Humperdinck's original scoring. With 20 minutes of the opera wholly instrumental, this could well be a shortcoming with some opera-lovers.
As a lively, provocative night at the theatre, Hansel and Gretel is a winner. It plays at the Bruce Mason Theatre in Takapuna on Thursday and Saturday, then TelstraClear Pacific Events Centre, Manukau, on Monday.
