REVIEW | Cunning Contradictions in the COC's "Little Vixen"
Despite its confusion concerning whom it is meant for, the stagecraft, direction, and performances are excellent
WORDS BY STEPHEN LOW
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL COOPER/COC
The English National Opera production of The Cunning Little Vixen — on stage at the Canadian Opera Company till February 16th — is riddled with rich and significant contradictions. This production of Leoš Janáček’s opera straddles a litany of oppositions: light/dark, young/old, heavy/light, human/animal, love/loss.
To begin with, The Cunning Little Vixen could be a children’s opera. It includes a fairytale protagonist and a whimsical menagerie of singing animals well-suited for a Disney film. But it also involves elements of a fable for adults who know the bittersweet experience of living in a world that includes loss, regret, and mortality.
Both child-oriented characters, and adult themes, are evident in this simple plot. Little Vixen tells the story of a fox, the titular Vixen, who is captured by a forester and brought home as a pet where she experiences cruelty at the hands of his wife and bratty children. After this harrowing experience, she eventually escapes back into the forest that is populated by a community of animals. Here, she falls in love, has children, raises her earth (the technical word for a mother fox’s group of offspring), and eventually is killed by a poacher. The forester is forever haunted by his memory of the fox and meditates on the natural cycle of life—being young, growing older, falling in love and having a family, and eventual death.
This production embraces a sense of whimsy in the costume design by Tom Scutt for the anthropomorphized animals: a rotund green latex body suit for the frog, sparkling blue spandex and ethereal translucent fabric wings of the dragonfly, a pin-striped suit for the badger, a shiny black plastic bustle with red chest detailing and a yellow crown for the rooster, and white lace dresses with yellow stockings and red accents on white veils for his brood. The fox and her earth are costumed in bright orange jumpsuits with matching caps sporting pointy ears and a matching necktie hanging from the back of their waist for a tail. The frog, dragonfly, and some of the mushrooms, are played by members of the Canadian Children’s Opera Company, further engaging the sense of the child-like character of the source material.
This stark contrast is evident when comparing the bright, playful costumes with the set (also by Scutt) of tall, rolling, plywood wardrobes containing freshly cut timber stacked inside. This contrast is exacerbated by the lighting design by Lucy Carter that often produces shadows more than it brightens the space and purposely leaves the cavernous depths of the backstage space, which is exposed to the audience, in the dark. The colourful costumes stand out against the beige, unpainted, unfinished pieces that are rolled around to create the walls of the forester’s house, the forest where the vixen raises her family and even the town where the forester enjoys a drink with his neighbours.
Despite its confusion concerning whom it is meant for, the stagecraft, direction, and performances are excellent.
A directorial conceit that provides a moving commentary on the story of the opera involves a thick log lying center stage which is lifted to hang above the performance. The log dispenses a strip of canvas that unrolls throughout the opera, hanging aloft, and piling up on the stage floor. On the strip of canvas, artistically rendered images that reflect the action of the opera are painted as it unfurls. The final images, as we watch the forester accept he has grown old and faces imminent death, are particularly striking.
Jane Archibald as the Vixen embodies a buoyant physical energy throughout, competently singing the part which, unfortunately, does not include any arias.
Christopher Purves, with a rich bass-baritone voice, captures the surly masculinity of the forester while simultaneously expressing a resigned sadness to the inherent tragedy of life.
Ema Nikolovska’s soaring soprano, as the Cunning Vixen’s lover and eventual partner, was a highlight of the performance.
The production managed to be both engaging and confusing. I appreciated the fine stagecraft but wondered how these artists couldn’t’ consider who they were making the work for as they made it. Upon leaving the theatre, I didn’t know if I was feeling melancholy as I considered my own mortality or in awe of the capacity of theatre to make the natural world come alive on stage. But maybe that was the point, after all, life itself is both bittersweet and a joy to experience.