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Gusto … British Youth Opera in Scoring a Century.
Gusto … British Youth Opera in Scoring a Century. Photograph: Robert Workman
Gusto … British Youth Opera in Scoring a Century. Photograph: Robert Workman

Scoring a Century review – youth can't animate an unfocused evening

This article is more than 4 years old

Peacock theatre, London
David Blake’s ‘musical entertainment’ falls some way short of its ambition, despite the best efforts of British Youth Opera

In the 1970s and 80s, David Blake was a prominent figure in British contemporary music with operas premiered at ENO in both decades. If his music has faded from view more recently, Blake, now 83, hasn’t stopped composing and the first London performances of Scoring a Century, which he categorises as “musical entertainment”, are part of British Youth Opera’s season.

With a libretto by Keith Warner, who also directs this BYO production, Scoring a Century is cast in 20 “panels”, which tell the story of the Jedermanns, a husband-and-wife variety act who sing and dance their way through the 20th century – from music hall to TV spectaculars – with a mixture of naivety and dauntless optimism. Never ageing, they have the unfailing knack of finding themselves in the wrong places at the wrong time, whether that’s Berlin during the Nazi persecution of Jews in 1938, the Soviet show trials of the 1950s, or among the student protests of the 1960s. A series of four “mini-operas”, written by their composer friend Berthold, portrays the full horror of the way in which the century is really unfolding around them.

Unflagging enthusiasm ... Holly Marie Bingham and Hugo Herman-Wilson. Photograph: Robert Workman

It’s a kind of singspiel, like Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny or Happy End, but with much more dialogue than music. The best of the score does hark back to that Weimar era, also a reminder that Blake studied with Hanns Eisler in the 1960s, but there’s too little of that and much more that could have come from any unsuccessful Broadway musical, while the stilted dialogue trips over some embarrassingly bad jokes. What just might have been a sharply focused satire is hopelessly long and far too uneven.

Apart from the Jedermanns, sung with unflagging enthusiasm by Holly Marie Bingham and Hugo Herman-Wilson, with Florian Panzieri as the chameleon-like Berthold and Joanna Harries as the soubrette-like Tartine, the rest of the large cast take on a host of cameo roles with more gusto than the piece deserves. Lionel Friend conducts the Southbank Sinfonia; he also conducted the premiere of Scoring a Century at Birmingham Conservatoire in 2010, so really should have known better than to revive it here.

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