Porgy and Bess, 23.7.14

Timothy Sheader’s new production of the Gershwin opera at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, based on a musical adaptation by Diedre L Murray, condensed the original, successfully bringing it, like the 2006 Trevor Nunn London production, much closer to musical theatre.

Rufus Bonds' crippled Porgy (centre) at the centre of the action

Rufus Bonds Jr and Nicola Hughes (who was Bess in the Nunn production) took the title roles. They were supported by Tony-award winner Phillip Boykin as baddass Crown, the magnificent Sharon D Clarke as matriarch Mariah, Golda Resheuvel as church elder Serena and, resplendent in natty yellow suit, the diminutive Cedric Neal as “happy-dust” dealer Sportin’ Life.  Bonds, Boykin and Neal were all on loan from Broadway. 

Phillip Boykin as Crown,
the alpha male with the voice to match

In an open-air setting, the vocal plaudits went to the powerful Boykin and Clarke and the acting plaudits to Neal and Hughes, who really inhabited their characters.  In contrast, Bonds and the orchestra were a little under-powered. 

Nicola Hughes' Bess samples the goods
(Phillip Boykin as Crown)

The show opened with Nicola Hughes, all taut sexual appetite, coming on silently in a black one-piece and donning a dress as dangerously red as her “loose woman” character.  Wrapped erotically around the big-bellied Crown, Bess is initially treated with disdain by the married women of 'Catfish Row'.  But when Crown kills Serena’s husband Robbins for his winnings from a game of 'craps' and has to go into hiding, Bess has an opportunity to come off the happy dust and “live decent” with crippled beggar Porgy.  Dealer 'Sporting Life' eventually tempts her back onto dope to snatch her away to NY, but the work ends with a hint of optimism as the besotted Porgy sets off in hot pursuit (cleverly staged here by Bonds walking tall over a series of strategically-placed tables). 


Cedric Neal struts his stuff as dealer Sportin' Life

Although Motley, like the rest of the planet, knew the main numbers (“Summertime”, “It ain’t necessarily so”, “I loves you, Porgy”), shamefully he'd never seen the whole work before.  It was fascinating to see how everything fitted together and to discover the lesser-known numbers (“My man’s gone now”, “It take a long pull to get there”, “Oh Doctor Jesus” & “A red-headed woman”).  And all at much less length than the operatic version!

With on-stage racial assaults, two murders, drug use and some fairly explicit crotch-grabbing, it was strong meat, both sexually and politically (which is probably why it took forty years to be accepted into the operatic repertoire).  Aside from baddies Crown and Sporting Life, the black residents of 'Catfish Row' were nonetheless sympathetically depicted as a coherent community, thrown together by poverty and white oppression. 


A set which came alive as the evening darkened

Staged against a cleverly-lit Expressionist luminous metallic backdrop, which changed colour according to the mood, this 1935 Depression-era work came across as more vividly sexual and political than Motley had anticipated: Brechtian in ambition.  (A hurricane, for example, was successfully simulated with only a few stage props.)   

Judging from the standing ovations, if this doesn’t turn into the London hit of the summer, Motley will eat his hat!

[Personal note:  many thanks to DP for the wonderful fourth row stalls seats and catering]