Playfulness and expressivity and release
I.
For those in mourning for the late Tom Stoppard, the Hampstead Theatre production of his “Indian Ink” is perfect consolation - not quite his greatest play but probably his most charming, an entertainment that touches seriously on both politics and, more seriously, sex. It’s the 1995 stage version of his 1991 radio play “In the Native State”. Stoppard’s radio plays have been issued on CD: as one who has listened often to “In the Native State”, I recommend it, above all for what was to be Peggy Ashcroft’s final performance, tenderly intelligent and wry. And “Indian Ink” is a lightweight title by comparison to “In the Native State”, which establishes a pun between the Indian principality and tbe nakedness or nudity of the heroine Flora Crewe, who is drawn in the altogether by the young Indian artist Nirad Das. But “Indian Ink” itself, for all its charm, is not lightweight.
Nudity, the native state, Eden, paradise, Arcadia: Stoppard spent years playing with the various meanings of all these, so that it seemed inevitable he should work on the film adaptation (“The Golden Compass”, 2007) of Philip Pullman’s “Northern Lights”, in which a prophecy has ordained that the young heroine Lyra is to be the second Eve, innocent and blessed mistress of carnal knowledge. Flora Crewe in “Indian Ink” is like Thomasina in “Arcadia”, a genius who dies young but whose stature emerges anew after her death; by way of research and evidence. But whereas Thomasina dies just as she is ready for her first sexual experience, Flora, a young British poet visiting India for her health, has had much experience of sex.
Her poem “In Heat” transforms the play: we suddenly hear how important a poet Flora is. The imaginative ardour she brings to evoking - and playing with - the ideas of heat as physical temperature and as sexual condition.
Stoppard the dramatist of sexual love and sexual desire has been considerably underrated. His “The Invention of Love”, revived at Hampstead Theatre twelve months ago, is an exceptional evocation of unrequited homosexual love; his “The Real Thing” (revived at the Old Vic in 2024) marvellously shows heterosexual love both required and tormented by jealousy, and here “Indian Ink” shows us a female artist both writing of sexual feeling and, as her sister says, using sex to recharge her batteries. (After this portrait of the female artist and her lovers, it’s scarcely a surprise that, in his 2006 play “Rock ‘n’ Roll”, Stoppard went on to devote a scene to the study of Sappho: the archetype of not just the female poet but of the artist in love.)
Hampstead Theatre, brilliantly, has been reviving a series of Stoppard plays in recent years (as has the Old Vic). It was chance that Stoppard died while this production of “Indian Ink”, directed by Jonathan Kent, was in process. (It’s odd that so stylish a director sanctions the consistent mispronunciation of “Modigliani” by several characters, wrongly sounding the G and stressing the “dig”.) The original Flora Crewe of both “In the Native State” and “Indian Ink” was Felicity Kendal: she and Stoppard were among those who suggested that she should now play Eleanor Swan, Flora’s younger sister (in old age). She does so with humour, panache, and, yes, charm As Flora, Ruby Ashbourne Serkis - attractive,hearty - wields too many ingratiating smiles. But the play exerts a multifaceted fascination. Stoppard, like the very different Pinter (the men were friends), was a master of ambiguity, so that it becomes a stirring delight to hear how the word “Indian”, like “heat”, keeps acquiring multiple meanings. It’s to be hoped that Hampstead now continues its Stoppard series, which has been enriching London life for many.
II.
On the Sunday lunchtime before Christmas, December 21, it was good to find the Wigmore Hall packed for the Marmen Quartet’s double bill of string quartets by Haydn and Beethoven. The violinist Johannes Marmen reminded us that this was the shortest day of the year, but advised us that they were compensating by giving us two quartets in the bright key of F to give us more light: they had already played Haydn’s opus. 50 no 5, “The Dream”, as he spoke these words, but the late Beethoven that followed, op. 135, brought more than its share of poetic darkness. Yet when the final movement broke into its pizzicato section, this brought such an abundance of lightness that I was on the brink of laughing out loud.
III.
That evening, the young countertenor Hugh Cutting presented an anthology of songs, ranging from Purcell to two commissions, that loosely connected to Morpheus, deity of sleep. He and his fellow musicians arranged these so that they had some kind of dream-like continuity.
At times, I question his choices of song - wouldn’t Schubert’s “Nacht und Träume” illustrate the Morpheus theme better than “Erlkönig”? - but Cutting, with much energy and charm, has become one of the artists who can anyway cast a spell in the Wigmore Hall: you go where he takes you. It was wonderful that he included Oberon’s “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows” from Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. One of Britten’s most marvellous examples of word-setting - and using Shakespeare’s most felicitously poetic concentrations of words - it perfectly showcases his gifts for sensuous diction and gossamer legato line.
Three days before (December 18, Cutting, the mezzosoprano Rebecca Leggett, William Christie, and Les Arts Florissants had presenred, also at the Wigmore Hall, another recital of English songs from Campion and Dowland to Purcell and so to the anglophone Handel of “Theodora”, “Jephtha”, and “Saul”. Here Cutting is in his element. Leggett, new to me, looks and sounds angelic: mesmerisingly pure. But Cutting, for all his adult-cherub looks, has a voice with a greater range of colours, and with more emotion. They and Christie’s players released the love of music-making that all this music - Purcell above all - contains: a quality of serious playfulness that’s not so far from Stoppard.
IV.
There are always Handel operas and oratorios you’ve never heard before: 2024 has already brought me several that have deepened and widened my sense of this master’s expressive and imaginative range, but Parts Two and Three of the oratorio “Israel in Egypt” - played and sung at the Wigmore Hall by Solomon’s Knot, with eight singers and double that number of instrumentalists - was a major revelation of Handel extending his gifts for word-setting. The title “Israel in Egypt” sounds such political dynamite that I was half-expecting the hall to be invaded by protesters - but the subject here is actually the people of Israel departing from Egypt. Handel treats the parting of the Red Sea several different ways: you can feel him enlarging his own expressiveness. There are no big-hit numbers, yet the oratorio grips. The emphasis is on the chorus (to a degree unusual even for Handel) and on narrative. There are lines when Handel sets some phrases without any verbal repetition, solely working with changing degrees of harmony, rhythm, and melody - and then, like a spring uncoiled, building other phrases up with fugal repetition and playful complexity.
Solomon’s Knot - two of whose singers were giving their hundredth performance with the ensemble - is a marvellous group, filling the Wigmore Hall stage to the point of overflow, easily moving between soloism, four-part harmony, and - once - more intricate elaboration. It gives further “Israel in Egypt” performances in Belgium in the New Year.
V.
A new documentary film, “The Nutcracker at Wethersfield”, beautifully captures how, in the winter of 2020, the choreographer Troy Schumacher organised a cortège of New York City Ballet dancers and created a new “Nutcracker” in a large and lovely old house in upstate New York, playing to audiences that moved from room to room with the unfolding of each “Nutcracker” scene. The film tells a happy story of creativity and co-operation, but it also induces tears with great ease and immediacy, because it memorably captures the need of dancers to dance. Covid was still holding New York in thrall over Yuletide 2020 - when these dancers had been unable to perform for nine months. This “Nutcracker” released them from their long dance-less inertia: their sense of fulfilment and rediscovery makes this a deeply touching record.
It’s also very easy on the eye. Not only is the house at Wethersfield lovely to look at, but it’s surrounded by wonderfully landscaped gardens - which were sprinkled and then covered with snow during this “Nutcracker” venture. The cast is led by Sara Mearns and Emma Von Enck (alternative Sugarplums), Tyler Angle, Mira Nadon, and other luminaries of New York City Ballet; everybody proves my point that “Nutcracker” has more meaning and vitality in America than on this side of the Atlantic. This moving documentary is available for international rental until January 5: seek it out at nutcrackerfilm.com/watch or balletcollective/nutcrackerfilm .
VI.
If I were giving awards for 2025, I’d give one to Cutting, an artist I’ve heard in recital, in opera, in concert, in venues from the Wigmore Hall to the Coliseum and Albert Hall, and in over four centuries of music. My award for most promising choreographer goes to Aaron Loux, whose Sound Companion dances to music by Henry Cowell at Manhattan’s Arts on Site on November 23, showed unusual blends of eloquence and inventiveness. Some sort of prize should go to Anna Netrebko, who has returned to London after years of absence: I’m sorry that at present she is performing mainly Puccini operas - her polychromatic voice calls for so much more - but certainly she’s turning them into major events. Best play is deserved by David Eldridge’s “End” (National Theatre), a movingly unsophisticated single-scene drama, whereas best musical premiere is taken by Tom Coult’s thoroughly odd and wonderfully surreal cantata “Monologues for the Curious”, wonderfully sung by Allan Clayton at its Albert Hall Proms premiere in July. And some other sort of prize must go to Handel, whose music has gone on surprising me with its versatility and expressive range throughout the year.
@Alastair Macaulay