Spoleto Review: "The Turn of the Screw" successfully turns up the creep factor
repost of Maura's review in Charleston City Paper
In times that can seem like a full-frontal assault on common decency, conjuring the kind of creep factor that prompts moral outrage can get lost in the fray. I’m here to say you can rest assured: “The Turn of the Screw” successfully elicits the icks intended from Henry James’s lurid tale of two ghosts.
In 1954, English composer Benjamin Britten and librettist Myfawnwy Piper debuted their own version of the story reshaped as a chamber opera. In the specter of the Cold War, it was served at a chilling moment on the global stage.
So, it may well have particular purchase in our current bracing era, as Spoleto Festival USA faces down the story’s dark forces. It presents a laudable, solid new go at the work under the direction of Rodula Gaitanou, with Francois Lopez-Ferrer conducting the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra.
The creep begins to crawl
Said screw turns as such: Miles, the young ward of a spanking-new governess (Elizabeth Sutphen), sees dead people. Actually, he regularly consorts with one in particular, a red-headed rogue by the name of Peter Quint, a former valet at the Bly country manner who can’t seem to quit the boy. Miles’s sister, Flora, spots the specters, too, herself the object of predation for one Miss Jessel, a former Bly governess known for an ill-fated dalliance with Quint.
Orphaned and left in the hands of an absentee uncle, the two children are easy prey, with scant more than a few house staff minding their business. Chief among that staff is Mrs. Grose, an affable housekeeper who prefers not to make trouble and hews to her boss’s hands-off mandate, refusing to flag when trouble is nigh.
It’s easy enough for the ghosts to further their evil aim, sung explicitly in lines like “the ceremony of innocence is drowned” — -a phrase borrowed from W.B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming” that once augured similarly dark days and slouching beasts.
Yes, that’s just as disquieting as it sounds, as the two apparitions insinuate themselves into the bed and psyches of the two children, prompting the once angelic Miles to lash out at classmates, get booted from school and then obstruct any resolution the governess puts into action to turn the metaphorical screw in a better direction.
A cast and score steeped in dread
To further this plot, Britten’s score casts its own eerie, orchestrated web of menace and threat over both players and patrons, twisting and turning as well, intensifying in gloom and discord that is made all the more unsettling by the children’s winsome lullabies. At the Dock Street Theatre, all of this sickly, swirling brew is manifest with unbridled strength and pitch panic conveyed by the excellent vocalists and musicians.
As the governess, Elizabeth Sutphen draws us into this fomenting torment, while Omar Najmi’s irresistible tenor serves up a Peter Quint as enticing as he is dripped in the sinister. As Mrs. Grose, Christine Brewer adds appealing ballast. At the opening performance Rachel Blaustein evocatively sings the role of Miss Jessel with Mary Dunleavy acting onstage.
At the core is all that imperiled, palpable innocence, impressively conjured by Everett Baumgarten as Miles and Maya Mor Mitrani as Flora. Both were preternaturally seasoned, a paradox of vulnerable lambs possessing both a stage presence and vocal surety of seasoned opera singers.
A stagecraft spell at Dock Street
As for the set, which was designed along with the costumes by Yannis Thavoris, it was among the most ingenious I’ve seen on the compact Dock Street stage. A complement to the venue’s own burnished layers of history, it features a wood-paneled wall used as both the interior and exterior of Bly. Jutting upstage left, it is met by a reflective scrim that in the opening scene captures the glow of the theater’s own dimly-lit sconces. Later, shadowy figures inhabit it. In front of that, a lone, fog-enshrouded boat suggests the kind of ride that yields no earthly return.
So yes, with the world’s incessant stream of groping Epstein entourages and questionable accountability, I was curiously heartened by the sense of squirm felt in the Dock Street over the course of “The Turn of the Screw.” If we can still sense the horror, realized expertly in this compelling production, perhaps the screw can turn once more.
IF YOU WANT TO GO: Remaining performances are June 1 at 5 p.m., June 3 at 7 p.m. and June 6 at 8 p.m.. For tickets: visit spoletousa.org.