9 January 2025
Sent into the woods to look for strawberries, hungry Hansel and Gretel embark on a fantastic adventure. As they fall asleep, a fairy-tale world comes to life around them. But the mysterious forest is not always safe for children, and little do they know, something darkly delicious awaits them when they wake… They can’t believe their luck when they come across an edible house made of chocolate – but their host, a witch in disguise, has an insatiable appetite – for young children!
Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera Hansel and Gretel had its world premiere in 1893. The Royal Opera orginally staged this production sung in the original German -not very kiddy friendly – but this festive season they really committed to being family-friendly by having it sung in English. The performance I attended was mainly filled with adults and truth be told, young children seated on seat boosters nearby seemed to take to it with varying degrees of concentration.
To my mind the production falls between stools, there is a distinct lack of theatrical magic and the WOW factor needed to engage the Ipad generation, and it’s not very scary – Hansel and Gretel’s mother Gertrud (Catherine Carby) is frankly more intimidating than the wicked witch (Carole Wilson) who is more a cackling Gotbags than truly terrifying. In the 1960s I clearly remember fleeing to the cinema toilet as a young kid when the witch in Disney’s Snow White appeared on the screen. Nothing to equal that here.
The gingerbread house is another matter. As the witch’s house – complete with a massive knife slicing the roof the roof like a gateaux and with an illuminated cherry on the top – spins into view and begins its slow advance down stage at the Royal Opera House, all you can think about is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Designer Antony McDonald (who also directs) has taken visual inspiration direct from Hitch’s famous Hollywood slasher noir thriller. The house is such a meticulous replica that I half expected a silhouettte of Anthony Perkins disguised as his dead mother to appear at the top window when it becomes illuminated with a blood red drizzle that I took to be raspberry sauce, but could easily be the blood spatter from a serial killer’s crime scene. That was definitely a visual nod for the adults in the audience as I imagine most young kids would prefer something more sugary, colourful and Haribo flavoured. more visually stunning and tempting. The house does have a chocolate stream for a front path and a few gingerbread men within easy reach for Hansel and Gretel to snap off and eat, but it is definitely lacking the WOW factor. Again, the kid nears me were distinctly non-plussed. It is not until the frontage swings round that we get to see the giant cauldron-like chocolate maker that will ultimately consume the witch and release all the children she has enslaved. Pushing the witch into an oven might be off limits, but her flailing arms as she descends into the molten hell are hardly less disturbing!
The one horrific and truly disturbing image from the design team sees Hansel strapped to a chair with a steampunk-inspired feeding funnel and tube strapped to his face by a gas mask with the witch force feeding him cake to fatten him up for her dinner. Much more of that please!
Hansel and Gretel are never off stage. So how do they fare? In truth, dwarfed by the massive trees set, they draw their characters with the biggest brush strokes imaginable, they are both way larger than life – Kate Lindsey’s Hansel stomps around, strikes panto-style Peter Pan poses with both hands on hips and gurns, while Heidi Stober’s Gretel is just hyperactive and annoying. They didn’t work for me.
Musically, with Humperdinck’s music combining the rustic charm of folk song with majestic orchestral scoring, the production is on safer territory and conductor Giedrė Šlekytė from Lithuania makes a solid, confident ROH debut.
Just such a shame the production failed to engage as planned with many of its young audience. A missed opportunity to inspire the next generation of opera lovers.
