Done to a turn: something for everyone in The Royal Opera’s Hansel and Gretel

The opening matinee of this revival was, the cast sheet told us, the 87th performance of Hansel and Gretel by The Royal Opera. A surprisingly low number, you might think. But Humperdinck’s musical Märchenspiel (Fairy Tale) has struggled to hold a place in the repertoire of British lyric theatres. The Grimm tale isn’t set at Christmas, after all: the berries picked by the children are not as magical as the Witch’s gingerbread house.

Where Hansel and Gretel strikes a chord with children, on both the page and in the theatre, is surely in the theme of hunger: the yearning for sweet treats which matures before long into other appetites. Where Antony McDonald’s staging likewise hits the spot is the continual sugar-drip of action, and novelty. There is always something new to look at, some movement of people or light or creatures sensitively timed and synced to the pulse of Humperdinck’s score.

On its previous revival, Mark Valencia threw cold water over the “dreary doggerel” of Kelley Rourke’s translation. I am more easily entertained – so were the adults around me – by rhyming “flustered” with “custard”. The staging has drawn heat elsewhere for its compilation of horror-film references in Act 3. To judge from the “Uh-oh” behind me, when the upstairs light flickers on in the Witch’s house, an acquaintance with Psycho is not required to work out that something (and someone) scary is up.

I would go again, just to marvel at one of Caspar David Friedrich’s most haunting forests brought to life. Giedrė Šlekytė’s conducting would also repay deeper acquaintance, for her tactful pressing of all the score’s Wagnerian buttons and eliciting string tone of velvet depth from the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. Gretel’s Third Act solo transported me to the Good Friday meadow of Parsifal; the family home in Act 1 is just down the road from Mime’s hut in Siegfried (here again, Rourke’s stab at Stabreim is surely to the point).

Most of all, as it should, the show belonged to the two central characters. Kate Lindsey’s live-wire Hansel was a tour de force of physical comedy, gawky and agile by turns, her tone often narrowed to piercing treble purity, offsetting the richer, even mezzo-ish warmth of Heidi Stober’s Gretel. The power and vocal dynamics between the pair fluctuated as changeably as children’s moods. As Peter and Gertrud, Catherine Carby and Thomas Lehman commanded their lines with the authentic ring of frayed parental authority. Sarah Brady’s Sandman brought a flash of magic realism, as though the Wizard of Oz had opened his mouth and out fell Schubert’s An die Musik.

There was more panto flair than vocal projection to Carole Wilson’s Witch, but if time begins to hang heavy after the interval, it is Humperdinck’s fault for using up his best tunes too quickly. When the Youth Opera Company enter as gingerbread children awaiting redemption, they bring the tug of pathos for anyone sensitive to the child abuse and domestic violence simmering in the Witch’s cauldron of chocolate, before the final tableau presents a fleeting, Sound of Music picture of domestic harmony. Like Santa’s sack of presents, there’s something for everyone.