And the Crowd (Wept) – review

Most newsworthy of the five pieces on offer on the opening night of the 2013 Tête à Tête opera festival was And the Crowd (Wept), a work still in development that focuses on the public career of Jade Goody, as lived out in the spotlight of a regularly hostile and often cruel media.

But in Afsaneh Gray's libretto, set to music by Erick Flores, Goody is not held up for posthumous ridicule. Alongside David Hansford's narrator – who somewhat confusingly starts the show as an elderly French woman before assuming his regular role – her story is otherwise told through the prurient eyes of three celebrity columnists, merely identified as One, Two and Three, and sung respectively by Sarah Minns, Norah King and Cathy Bell. At times, members of this caustic trio mutate into Goody herself, presenting an endearingly innocent figure, despite her notorious casual racism and multiple mispeakings. The result is both satirical and sad, as the arc of Goody's swift descent from self-imagined icon to national hate figure moves through its classic trajectory. Adam Gatehouse conducts an assured performance of a score that holds the attention, and Pia Furtado's straightforward production proves surprisingly touching.

It's not possible to catch all five pieces in the festival's initial programme, because some of them play simultaneously. Ergo Phizmiz's Gala describes the relationship between the 79-year-old wife of Salvador Dalí and the 23-year-old singer Jeff Fenholt, who was playing in Jesus Christ Superstar when their encounter occurred; but the result seems flippant, and the frequent intervention of puppets contributes surprisingly little. Even sketchier as yet is Pete M Wyer's La Belle de la Bête, a love story set in 1960s Barbados; unstaged excerpts from the first act meandered amiably along without suggesting a strong artistic personality.