Review: Peter Grimes Welsh National Opera at Mayflower Theatre

Modern liberal sensibilities abhor our history as slave traders, but many of us still turn a blind eye to the provenance of ultra-cheap goods when we want a bargain. We’re imperfect beings, so, inevitably, music has often drawn on that theme. In 1965, for example, The Animals sang “I’m Just A Soul Whose Intentions Are Good, Oh Lord, Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”; a new idea, or merely echoing earlier musical messages?

Welsh National Opera’s production of Peter Grimes at Southampton's Mayflower Theatre is a case in point. Benjamin Britten’s modernist opera, set in the 19th century. A century-old fishing village, tells the story of the rough-and-ready fisherman Peter Grimes, a social misfit who is pilloried by locals after his apprentice, bought from the workhouse, drowns during a fishing trip. Warned against taking another apprentice, he nevertheless once again hires a workhouse inmate, perhaps believing that he is giving him a better life, perhaps simply unable to turn down the chance of cheap labour. Seeing any social pattern here?

(Image: Dafydd Owen) Grimes treats the boy with rough, proprietorial disdain, yet has a vision of creating a better life for them both and for his inamorata, Ellen. But when this apprentice dies in another tragic accident, few in the village can tolerate Grimes any further, and he’s forced to take his own life or face a vigilante mob.

The opera is largely recitative, with the occasionally abstract, often impressionistic score driving the mood of the piece – you’ll find nothing here to hum on the way home. Nicky Spence is a tower of objectionable single-mindedness as Grimes, compellingly supported by David Kempster as Balstrode, one of the few villagers who tries to help the recalcitrant fisherman, and Dame Sarah Connolly as the innkeeper, “Auntie”.

It’s an imaginative staging of a very English opera which, when viewed as a play set to a musical background (rather than a musical play), grows in stature as it progresses and holds your attention throughout.

Ultimately, though, it’s an evocation of social mores. You’re left to make up your own mind about Grimes: was he just a shyster with an eye for the main chance, or a misunderstood soul whose intentions were good – a forerunner of The Animals, as it were? Either way, this production’s a timely, socially-provocative tour de force.

• Review by Chris Parkinson-Brown