For two nights last week Heaven, the famous gay nightclub, was transformed into an alluring theatre space. It isn’t the first venue you’d think of for a rare Handel opera, but it turned out to be a piece of marketing genius for the Covent Garden Festival: ‘Clori, Tirsi & Fileno’ is as gay as it gets. Lee Blakeley’s humorous production takes Handel’s dramatic cantata and turns it into a debauched romp where the two male leads, fed-up with their vampish two-timing diva lover, decide to renounce women and fall in love with each other. A trio of sexy male dancers take as much pleasure in kissing and flirting with each other as the female lead. Given this is Handel, the gender rules are even more confused, with a counter tenor and a female taking the male roles. Heaven couldn’t have been a more perfect location.
The action has been cheekily updated to a modern wedding. This gives the opera’s sexual theme a nice irony and allows for some playful interplay between the dancer waiters and Zoë Todd’s alluring Clori.
The music, conducted by Timothy Redmond, is handled with sensitivity that never allows the repetitive nature of the music to become tiresome. The three young singers do a fine job, with Kathryn McCusker (Fileno) offering moments of real sorrow and Simon Baker playing on the sailor imagery in his arias.
Advertised as a promenade performance, the show proves over-dependent on the stage and raised walkway that stretches the length of the space. The audience doesn’t have to move around and follow the action and so it turns into a generally static performance. When the singers do move among the crowded audience, the piece comes alive and you want more.
‘Clori, Tirsi & Fileno’ is a sexually thrilling production that offers many delights. Its strong sexual pacing; overt gay theme and camp humour works perfectly with the intrinsically gay setting and turns a Handel opera into a piece of real event theatre.
Read our interview with the show’s director
Lee Blakeley.
Clori, Tirsi & Fileno,
by George Frideric HandelHeaven Nightclub
Charing Cross Arches
Villiers Street
London, WC2N 6NG
CGF Box Office: 020 7369 179316 and 18 May 2001The excellent Covent Garden Festival continues with a wide variety of shows until the 2 June 2001. From cabaret to opera, and everything in between, it presents a dizzying variety of artists and performances. Check out www.cgf.co.uk for more information.