July is an exciting month in Buxton, bringing a flurry of festivals to the exquisite Georgian spa town: not just the opera, literature, jazz and other music of the Buxton International Festival (soon to celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2019), but well dressing, a special Derbyshire tradition which can be directly traced back to the 17th century, and reaches far beyond that into the county’s folk history past. Like so many other English country customs, well dressing was powerfully reinvigorated by the Victorians, and remains a folk art fixture in certain parts of the county to this day; other villages periodically revive it, according to local enthusiasm.
Art meets life, then, in Buxton’s choice of Albert Herring for this year, Britten’s comic opera which sees Lady Billows, self-appointed moral bastion of the Suffolk village of Loxford, reviving the tradition of the May Queen in an attempt to promote the virtues of purity and chastity among Loxford’s girls. However, it’s a case of shutting the stable door long after the horse has bolted, and unable to find a Loxford maiden worthy of the name, Lady Billows and her committee are forced to select Albert as May King, the unimpeachable son of Mrs Herring, keeper of the village shop, who has never besmirched his reputation in thought, word, or deed. Ironically, it’s his £25 prize, Virtue’s literal earthy reward as donated by Lady Billows, which gives Albert the means – as well as the provocation – to throw off the shackles of filial obedience and disappear into the dark to see what temptation actually has to offer, throwing the community into hysteria, and his Mum into hysterics; I trust the revival of well dressing has never wrought similar havoc on some secluded corner of Derbyshire.
Director Francis Matthews places Albert Herring unerringly in the post-war period of its genesis: a framed photograph of Winston Churchill hangs on the wall, an atmosphere of rationing pervades (Eric Crozier’s libretto continuously teases us with tantalising references to food and fresh fruit), and characters wear sensible tweed, wool and serge. Adrian Linford’s arresting set design uses an unfinished picture-postcard as its background, burnt and damaged in one corner, not yet painted in the other, to show Lady Billows’ nostalgic dream of a perfect village is as doomed as it is imaginary; Act 2 sees the marquee planned for Albert’s coronation tea fly away, with the chorus doggedly clutching umbrellas, in true English summer tradition. Matthews adds a silent Stranger, acted by Simeon John-Wake, sashaying through the set regularly in a sharp suit and hat, half his face painted white; when Albert plucks up the courage to seek adventure, the Stranger teaches him how to dance – an allegory of how to escape. This embodying the exotic Other on stage isn’t a new idea for staging this opera, but, as ever, it works. Mrs Herring’s shop is beautifully and believably real, with barrows of vegetables, sacks, crates, wooden shelves and the all-important shop’s doorbell tinkling loudly at entrance and exit (or when rung in mischief by cheeky village children).