Edinburgh International Festival: Porgy and Bess may always be associated with America in the Depression, but dance adds to its universal message

Published on Friday 26 March 2010 18:23

IN his 1935 opera Porgy and Bess, George Gershwin hit upon issues that could hardly be more relevant to today. The action centres on an all-black dockside ghetto, Catfish Row, in 1930s South Carolina, where poverty and oppression are part of everyday life. The characters – drawn from the novel by DuBose Heyward, who co-wrote the libretto with Ira Gershwin – bear familiar sub-cultural traits. Porgy is a cripple; Crown is a thug; Sportin' Life is a smooth-talking drug dealer peddling "happ

At the same time, there's a camaraderie – a self-governing support system – operating in the ghetto that protects its own and, where necessary, metes out its own moral and physical justice.

"It could so easily be a ghetto environment in the outskirts of any city," says Serge Dorny, general director of Opra de Lyon and former chief executive of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, whose company brings its highly-acclaimed, highly-individual 2008 production of Gershwin's "American folk opera" to this year's Edinburgh International Festival. That was certainly the view taken by the recent Cape Town Opera production that toured the UK, and updated the setting to a 1960s township in Soweto.

"If you look at the piece today, the subject is the kind of ghetto communities that exist around parts of Seoul, Paris or Los Angeles, but are a world apart from the centres of these cities," he adds. "Go to Peckham, in London, for instance, and you immediately have a feeling that you are somewhere else entirely."

The problem is, updating or relocating this particular opera has never been straightforward.

That stems from Gershwin's insistence from the word go that it should always be sung by an all-black cast – never a problem for the Cape Town production. Permission to alter that, if it were given, would have to come from each of the Heyward and Gershwin (both George's and Ira's) family estates. According to Dorny, Opra de Lyon decided it simply wasn't worth the hassle.

Instead, they worked within the rules and came up with a creative solution that adheres to traditional casting and setting guidelines, but also universalises and contemporises the theme of the opera by the clever integration of contemporary dance and video footage.

It succeeds, says Dorny, through "the careful juxtaposition of three distinct elements – acting, dancing and video". "The story is by far the most important thing," he explains. "It's not a lovely fairy tale; we're probably talking about a story of the 1930s Great Depression, and we capitalise on that in this production. So it's important to ensure that it is translated through the acting of the main characters."

The fact that the location may, or may not be, deepest Charleston becomes irrelevant when the story is effectively played out, which it will be again by the original 2008 cast – including Derrick Lawrence as Porgy and Janice Chandler-Eteme as Bess – alongside dancers from the Compagnie Montalvo-Hervieu and Thtre National de Chaillot, all under the joint direction of Jos Montalvo and Dominique Hervieu. Festival regulars will recall Mantalvo and Hervieu's previous hit On Danse, which featured in the 2007 dance programme.

But how does Dorny justify the grafting-on of radical and additional choreography in this particular opera? "If you look at the music, dance rhythms are present everywhere in Gershwin's musical score," he argues. "The way such communities express their solidarity is often done through dance. Solidarity sits right at the centre of this piece. Sometimes the choreography co-exists with the action, sometimes it is seen in juxtaposition, but always it should act as an illustration and amplification of the theatrical, like a second reading. The two elements can co-exist without one overtaking the other. The intention is not to turn the opera into a ballet; it is still an opera."

Indeed, the parallel existence of dance in this production allows the directors to introduce eye-catching contemporary references without twisting the storyline. "When we think of urban cultures today, we think of hip hop, crump and other off-culture dance styles invented and developed in the ghetto streets. They fit the theme of Porgy and Bess perfectly."

Contemporary references don't stop there. With video providing a third "theatrical" element, footage of the Los Angeles riots of 1992 (when six days of mass looting followed the beating up by police of a black speeding motorcyclist), and of Paris in 2005 (which erupted in response to the police prosecution of three black youths) is used to amplify the self-preserving instincts of such a poverty-stricken ghetto community as Catfish Row.

There is, after all, that moment in Porgy and Bess where the black community refuses to co-operate with the police – no-one will "grass" on Porgy after he kills Crown. But even before that, after Crown has killed Robbins, a white detective bursts in on the day of mourning to falsely accuse Peter of the murder, with the clear intent of pressuring him to testify against the real murderer.

But this production also uses video footage to offer a close-up view of some of the opera's most emotionally-charged moments.

"At the day of mourning, Robbins' widow Selina is isolated on screen to emphasise the pain she is experiencing. The intention is not to tell any other story. It is an emotional illustration."

Pull all these media strands together, and the end product is, according to Dorny, "a gesamt (complete, entire] project".

"All these elements are interlinked. One does not exist without the other," he says.

Reviews of the original performances hailed Lyon's version as "a life-enhancing, high-octane production", one that "takes the breath away". What no production should ever take away, though, is the soul-wrenching power of Gershwin's score – that unique blend of African-American music (such timeless showstoppers as I got plenty o'nuttin or Summertime) and classic through-composed opera.

If Lyon's production is as sensitively balanced as Dorny claims, and with a cast known to be as powerful theatrically as it is vocally, there should be little danger of that soul-wrenching power being lost.

&#149 Porgy and Bess is at Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Saturday 14, Monday 16 and Tuesday 17 August.

&#149 Sponsored by Lloyds TSB Scotland.