Reviewer Preston Witts is enchanted by the portrayal of Imogen Holst and Benjamin Britten in Ben and Imo at the RSC’s Swan Theatre until 6th April
IF anything could be described as an “Imogen Holst Revival” it’s happening right now on the stage of the RSC’s Swan Theatre in Stratford.
This daughter of the great English composer Gustav Holst – the man who wrote The Planets – is being given a mesmerising portrayal by the actress Victoria Yeates in a drama exploring the very nature of creative genius.
The genius in this case is not Imogen Holst (though in many ways it ought to be). It is the composer Benjamin Britten, whom she assisted in the writing of Gloriana, the opera produced to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953.
In Mark Ravenhill’s play Ben and Imo Ms Yeates lights up the stage with a demonstration of creative genius of her own – not only acting brilliantly, but dancing as well, with a spot of singing thrown in for good measure.
As for acting, the man playing Britten (Samuel Barnett) is not bad either. In fact, he gives a pretty good impression of a composer wracked by self-doubt, indecision and artistic neurosis in this account of the highly-strung relationship between the two hugely gifted musicians.
Directed by Erica Whyman, Ben and Imo offers a sometimes unedifying picture of Britten as a spoilt child alternately being humoured, and then told off, by a long-suffering governess in the person of Imo Holst. At one point she asks him why he behaves like a child every time he can’t get his own way.
But here, of course, we’re dealing with genius – for which excuses are made. What has to be remembered is that Britten had already become quite famous with his opera Peter Grimes several years before the period in which this play is set. And, as someone who started off as a child prodigy, he also had a wide variety of other compositions under his belt.
But in Ben and Imo the character Britten declares: “When I was a child, composing was easy. Now I have all these hang-ups.”
It is interesting that he was chosen by the artistic establishment (the name Kenneth Clark, Lord Clark of Civilisation, is bandied about quite a lot) to write a major work to mark this momentous occasion in British history. After all, musical figures such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sir William Walton, Sir Arnold Bax, Sir Arthur Bliss and Michael Tippett (not yet knighted) were still around.
Perhaps it was the urgency with which the work was needed that was the impetus for choosing Britten, who was relatively young – he’d just turned 39 – when he was approached with the commission in late 1952.
At one point in Ben and Imo his speed of writing music was compared by Holst to that of Mozart, though Britten was self-effacing enough to retort that in a competition with Mozart he’d get knocked out in the first round!
He had just six months in which to complete his new opera, and the jagged nerves this set off is where Imogen Holst came in. Although his lover, the tenor Peter Pears, was one of his sounding boards, he needed someone like Holst to bounce ideas off who would make themselves available whenever needed.
And was he lucky that she was there for him. Although in real life they’d met several times before, it was her arrival at his house on the seafront at Aldeburgh in Suffolk that marks the opening of the play.
Carrying her suitcase and a brolly, Yeates (Holst) emerges breathlessly like a young Joyce Grenfell who’s about to say “Jolly Hockey Sticks” or ask “Is Anyone for Tennis?” Instead she’d arrived to be Britten’s “musical assistant” – a description much-debated over, with even “amanuensis” being considered (and then rejected) as she set about helping Britten with his nerve-wracking endeavours.
Holst, six years older than Britten, was a composer in her own right (though didn’t consider herself “good enough”) and was a much-respected champion of amateur musicians and choral societies throughout the land.
But in her role for Britten she subjugated her own talents to the greater good of nurturing the maestro she’d decided to assist in his efforts to create a work of art celebrating the New Elizabethan Age.
Provocatively, perhaps, Britten chose as his theme the relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex (who later led a rebellion that resulted in his execution). This choice of subject provided the characters on stage in Stratford some elements of mirth. The title of Gloriana is taken from the poet Edmund Spencer’s name for Elizabeth I in his epic work The Faery Queene, published in 1590.
As the opening night got closer and closer, Holst performed the vital, but hum-drum, task of copying out the score – rather in the manner of Lady Elgar for her husband – in between bouts of over-charged emotion stemming from the volatility of the person she was trying to help.
The set – designed by Soutra Gilmour – is sparse. But what else do you need for a play like this apart from a grand piano (occasionally tinkled by both actors) and a couple of chairs on which to sit?
And with acting like this you hardly need any other accoutrements. The delivery, the diction and the clarity of both performances is of the highest standard. And Ms Yeates could be on the way to fast becoming a national treasure…
