The Conservatoire had a great success in 2019 with the first British staging of Heggie's Dead Man Walking, one of the most successful operas of recent years. It is therefore encouraging to see them follow it up so quickly with one of Heggie's later works. Three Decembers has already been performed widely in the USA.
It is an intimate piece with three characters, covering the Christmas breaks in 1986, 1996 and 2006, and includes the expected family arguments, as well as the inevitable illness and death. It also deals, perhaps at arms length, with the effects of the AIDS crisis.
The piece lasts around 90 minutes, so the Conservatoire completed the evening with one of the earliest successes by another American composer, Gian-Carlo Menotti. Given his great popularity and the fact that he lived in East Lothian for much of the last quarter of his long life, his neglect in Scotland, indeed in the UK, is surprising, and perhaps rather shameful. The Medium is a short melodrama, one of his earliest works, first seen in 1946.
Three Decembers turned out to be a highly successful piece and it was tackled with great confidence and accomplishment by the student cast in a simple staging by Matthew Eberhardt in the intimate space of the Conservatoire's studio theatre. The band of ten players to the left of the stage seemed slightly over-projected for the opening minutes (at the second performance) when the supertitles were necessary. However the conductor, William Cole, quickly settled down and balance was ideal from then on.
The drama was beautifully structured, with the siblings initially isolated from their somewhat self-centred mother. However as the drama progressed their understanding developed, as did their sympathy for their parent who had, after all, done a reasonable job in difficult circumstances.
The two siblings were given hugely sympathetic readings by Pawel Piotrowski and Rosie Lavery. Initially on stage together, she is in Hartford (Connecticut), not entirely happy with husband and two young children - he is in San Francisco with his gay lover. This being 1986 the AIDS crisis is under way, and Charlie's partner, Burt, is ill. Over the phone brother and sister discuss, in generally sarcastic terms, the Christmas letter they receive from their mother as a matter of routine every year. They are frustrated that Maddy always ends up concerned with her own life rather than theirs. The fact that she refers to the boyfriend as Curt causes particular offence. There is no reference to the careers of either of the young adults, as we concentrate on other matters.
Flora Birkbeck makes much of Maddy's difficult character, a role composed for that great mezzo Frederica von Stade. She has been a lone parent for most of her adult life, during which, as a successful actress, she has generally been away from home. The children barely try to conceal their bitterness, particularly as they have no memory of their father, who died, apparently in a road accident, when they were very young. Gradually the ice thaws as the years pass. By 1996 we learn that Maddy did visit San Francisco shortly before Burt died, and some kind of reconciliation occurred. However despite her best intentions her obsession with her own life and career keeps breaking out. The climax comes with the revelation that their father, also an actor, seems to have been frustrated at his relative lack of success, and had committed suicide. Bea and Charlie's horror at last develops to a degree of sympathy for their mother. The short final sequence set in 2006, is largely concerned with their eulogies at their mother's funeral.
In all this is a thoroughly worthwhile chamber piece given a highly effective UK premiere.
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