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Henrietta Bredin

Wednesday, 26th March 2008

Henrietta Bredin talks to the Young Vic’s David Lan and ENO’s John Berry about the joys of collaboration

Walking into the Young Vic these days is a hugely pleasurable experience, and it’s even more of a pleasure to see the delight with which David Lan, its artistic director, looks around him at a theatre that has become so lively, busy and welcoming. The building recently underwent a much-needed overhaul and reopened in October 2006 — impressively on time and on budget — with three performing spaces, including two new studios, and public areas that are really appealing to spend time in. This is all to the good for English National Opera, which is about to launch a collaboration with the Young Vic with productions of two unique pieces of music theatre: Harrison Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy, first performed in 1968, and Lost Highway by Olga Neuwirth, which had its première in Graz in 2003.

‘These are genuine co-productions,’ says Lan, ‘with benefits for both companies on work that neither of us could do alone.’ During his tenure at the Young Vic he has built a reputation for the theatre as a place where anything can happen, where audiences turn up without a preconceived idea of what to expect. The first show in the revamped main theatre space was a community opera, Jonathan Dove’s Tobias and the Angel, which involved over 100 performers, professional and amateur, and had a libretto by Lan himself. He trained as an actor (and a social anthropologist), he is a director and a writer and now a visionary producer, so is familiar with all aspects of the complex, multilayered business of theatrical and musical realisation.

‘It’s wonderful to be working with him,’ says the ENO’s music director Edward Gardner, who will be conducting Punch and Judy. ‘He helped us find Daniel Kramer as a director, for example. It’s very exciting to be giving Daniel the breathing space to do his first opera, and it turns out that he has been fascinated by the Punch and Judy story for years so this is exactly right for him.’

There is much more intermingling and cross-fertilising of artistic talent between opera, theatre and indeed film than there used to be, and an opera company and a theatre company can both benefit enormously from a collaboration of this nature. Back in the 1990s ENO and the Almeida Theatre joined together for a stimulating and fruitful few years of producing new operas, and it is heartening to see a similar venture taking shape again now. ‘There is a ritual structure to the way in which operas get put on,’ says Lan, ‘and we can help make that a more flexible process.’ Gardner relishes the prospect of being able to work in a more intimate space on operas that would not be possible to perform in the vast arena of ENO’s home at the London Coliseum and he is appreciative of the opportunity this will present for singers and for members of the ENO Orchestra to develop, take risks and learn new skills.

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