Love across time and cultures: Clorinda Agonistes at Sadler's Wells

We can be sure that any work directed and choreographed by Shobana Jeyasingh will be underpinned by a robust and far-reaching intellectual enquiry and in the case of Clorinda Agonistes (Clorinda the warrior) the concentrated depth of her research was further enabled by the unintended present of extra time afforded by Covid lockdowns.

Jeyasingh’s primary source is Claudio Monteverdi’s 17th-century opera Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, which in turn represents an episode in Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme liberata that tells of a duel in the Crusades where the Christian knight Tancredi slays a masked Saracen warrior not knowing that she is the woman he has fallen in love with. Jeyasingh spends the first part of her work depicting this event and, in the second, transports her narrative from the Middle Ages to the present day while remaining fixed on the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

These two parts (there is no interval) are delineated in several ways. The Monteverdi opera gives way to an excellent, modern bespoke score by Syrian-American composer, Kareem Roustom; film of shattered buildings and other war-torn imagery is projected onto a quartet of oddly-shaped “screens” on the backdrop; the character of Tancredi assumes the role of a photo-journalist capturing these images; and that of Clorinda (the incognito Saracen warrior) is portrayed by four dancers.  This latter device seemed to highlight a central message in Jeyasingh’s multifarious concept, which is to exemplify the strength and resilience of women against all the odds. Throughout their duel, Tancredi continually asks Clorinda to reveal her identity, which would surely have saved her life, but in a fatal act of stubborn defiance, she refuses to do so again and again. 

One impressive success of Clorinda Agonistes is Jeyasingh’s deft integration of opera and dance. The scale of the Sadler’s Wells stage enables her to tuck the small orchestra away in the upstage left quartile, leaving plenty of room for the action. Her choreography embraces the movement of the tenor, Ed Lyon (portraying Tasso’s narrator, Testo), who interacts seamlessly with the two dancers of the first part: Jonathan Goddard as Tancredi and Jemima Brown in the title role. Unfortunately, the early part of Lyon’s otherwise excellent performance was impacted by the occasional irritation of crackling sound interference. It seemed odd that he was present live on stage but the later performance of the soprano Dima Orsho was recorded – a question of logistics, budget or both?

A show that has as its main events, the unwitting slaying of a woman by the man who loves her and the interminable conflict in the Middle East, is bound to be dark and so it was in both dramatic and lighting tones. The set design – by Merle Hensel – was based upon a dozen cylindrical light poles, irregularly but closely spaced in two groups of six. They were strong visually, taking on different colour tones in combination with the lighting effects, but their relevance wasn’t at all clear and they tended to distract and obscure (some of the surtitles were not fully readable through the poles from my seat, for example). The use of surtitles, in blocks of text on the backdrop was interesting; Jeyasingh used these as an introduction, giving everyone a précis of a programme note before the performance began in earnest, which I liked, but their use to translate the singing was sparing and sporadic. Much of the Italian text was untranslated in surtitles and then suddenly a sentence or two would appear (I couldn’t help wondering if, like the sound interference, this was caused by a technical problem – if not; it begged the question of why the use of surtitles should be so sparse).

In truth, so many creative and thematic ideas put together in an hour-long performance created a rather muddled output and the other elements that raised this above the average were Jeyasingh’s distinctive choreography, which went way beyond just illustrating the music – particularly in her motifs for Tancredi in the first part (beautiful Baroque positioning, combative lunging and spinning) – and the outstanding performances by Goddard and Brown, two of the finest dancers of today, ably supported by the trio of extra 21st-century “Clorinda’s” in Emily Thompson-Smith, Harriet Waghorn and Ellen Yilma.

In this powerful production, Jeyasingh provides much food for thought although it may take more than a single viewing to process it all.