NZ Opera Presents: Eight Songs For A Mad King
11th – 19th March 2020
Ellen Melville Centre, Auckland, New Zealand.
Review by Sarah Kidd. Photography by Jeff McEwan.
At a board room table, the gloss coating its dark wood glinting under the cold rectangular light fixtures, a man sits, head laid upon his arms in slumber. The King, dressed in his three-piece suit, his bright red waistcoat denoting his stratum enters, sits and with a furrowed brow sets off a Newton’s cradle, the shiny steel ball colliding with the next in a chain reaction of tension.
Click, click, click; madness rapping at the door.
Every year the Auckland Arts Festival offers up a sublime selection of events to peruse and partake of, a new production by New Zealand Opera entitled Eight Songs for a Mad King, one of the most challenging and yet rewarding in the 2020 programme.
A monodrama of just thirty minutes by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (libretto by Randolph Stow), Eight Songs for a Mad King is derived from the melodies that King George III himself would play on his small mechanical organ in an attempt to train his bullfinches to sing. The King of both Great Britain and Ireland, George III was a devoted husband (one of the few kings not to take a mistress), a father of fifteen and the first king to study science as part of his education.
He was also – in his later years – quite decidedly mad.
By presenting King George as a CEO of today rather than an 18th century gentleman, director Thomas de Mallet Burgess cleverly pulls the tragic King standing before us into the present and by doing so offers one and all a reminder that mental health does not discriminate; it cares not for status, intelligence, nor warmth of heart. Whether via disease or genetics, financial ruin or the collapse of a relationship, it is never far from one’s door, a psychological breakdown perched upon its lips, ready to be bestowed upon one’s forehead with a fateful kiss.
It is how people view this descent into instability that is one of the most alluring aspects of the production. Performed twice the audience – which is limited to just one hundred – is split into two groups, the first viewing the performance within the room itself, the second from outside, a small distance away, everything listened to through lightweight (but with exquisite clarity) headphones.
Inside the room, with the audience seated around the aforementioned board room table, the orchestra behind them on one side, windows the other, the atmosphere is one that is almost claustrophobic as King George begins to pace about the room. Physically this role is so utterly demanding that the fact Robert Tucker performs it twice an evening almost causes concern. This isn’t a role that calls for a little pacing and flailing of arms; Tucker using the table in every way possible, from dancing atop of it, to crawling underneath. At one point he even slides across it’s top on his back, his now bare feet the pistons which push him along.
Vocally Tucker is sheer wonderment to behold, the role requiring a baritone that can cover five octaves as he swings from one wild statement to another, Tucker handling it with such ease that it is almost confrontational; the lunacy he conjures up living and breathing in the room like an entity crouched in the corner. Even the orchestral ensemble goes above and beyond; flautist Luca Manghi at one point being manhandled by Tucker yet never missing a note, while on violin, Yuka Eguchi plays her part beautifully, looking lost and forlorn as the King steals from her fingers her precious instrument. Roughly his hands caress it, pulling at it’s strings as he speaks of sin before bringing about its untimely demise.
Small but ingenious creative touches elevate the themes contained within; the drawing of the word ‘harm’ on the window, the heavy leather floggers used on the drum as the King is marched from the room. But most of all it is the brilliance of the staging, allowing for not just a first and a second audience (the one seated inside and the one out) but a third audience, made up of passer-by’s who cannot help but notice the actions going on through the large plate glass windows.
It was these reactions that were most fascinating; some people politely putting their heads down and scurrying away, others pausing to watch, some fascinated, many perplexed; but most noticeable were the ones that mocked.
It pointed to how those afflicted by insanity, their fingernails unable to gain purchase on the ever-increasing slippery surface of their mind must feel. Constantly watched, the burden of embarrassment in lucid moments increased tenfold, the feeling of worthlessness as a human being growing as others jeer. Anxiety building, leading to self-medication in various forms, which in turn only makes the downward spiral turn faster all compounding the King’s situation at hand.
Audience members will no doubt draw their own interpretations as they bear witness to the production from both angles, societies views about that which is before them unique to each individual. One would hope though, that at least one of those perspectives is kindness.
Eight Songs for a Mad King proves that New Zealand Opera is willing to push boundaries and challenge the status quo, a move that should be widely applauded. The production itself an absolute triumph, perfectly suited for a festival as magnificent as the Auckland Arts.
Were you there at the Ellen Melville Centre for this innovating and moving opera? Or have you seen Eight Songs For A Mad King performed live somewhere else? Tell us about it in the comments below!
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