Billy Budd review – Clayton’s Vere is the devastating heart of vivid staging

Glyndebourne, Sussex This revival of Michael Grandage’s atmospheric production of Britten’s opera has numerous fine performances: Thomas Mole and Sam Carl are persuasive as Billy and Claggart, and Allan Clayton’s luminous Vere is a standout Brutalist grey, its deck gently curved, HMS Indomitable looms over Michael Grandage ’s production of Britten’s Billy Budd . Half-skeleton, half-cage, the ship is relentlessly claustrophobic, its hard edges softened only by coils of rope, hammocks and Paule Constable ’s subtle, painterly lighting. No wonder the opera’s crowd of male bodies – clad here in spotless Napoleonic naval uniforms and grubby workwear – carries a palpable charge: visceral, violent, erotic. Thanks to the curved deck, those standing centre-stage of Christopher Oram ’s set appear as if through a fish-eye lens or one of the officer’s telescopes. In this floating world at war, everyone is subject to scrutiny. Premiered at Glyndebourne in 2010 , Grandage’s production is now in the hands of revival director Ian Rutherford . The lines are firmly drawn between the goodness of the piece’s “angel” Billy Budd and the malevolence of its villain, John Claggart, whose “sexual discharge gone evil” (librettist EM Forster’s words) results in Budd’s death. Budd swings across the stage, lithe as a gymnast, unique in his physical ease. Claggart cowers and barks. The love “that could not speak its name” at the opera’s 1951 premiere has here found other ways to communicate; in one scene, Claggart bullies the terrified Novice in a chokehold that is simultaneously, unmistakably an embrace. Continue reading...