What exactly is The Soldier’s Tale? The score says “To be read, played, and danced” and ‘playing’ refers both to acting and to playing music. There are just seven instrumentalists, high and low instruments from each section, thus violin and double bass, clarinet and bassoon, cornet and trombone. There is also percussion to represent the Devil, the violin being the soul of the soldier, for Ramuz’s play retells the Faust legend. So a play with incidental music, except that there is nothing ‘incidental ‘about Stravinsky’s score, which is central to the experience. The Hallé’s presentation was filmed, partly outdoors in Mancunian locations, partly indoors in an acting space without a set, alongside the musicians with whom the actors occasionally interacted. Whatever the genre, this interpretation by co-directors Annabel Arden and Femi Elufowoju Jr was intelligently conceived and brilliantly executed.
The “dusty track” of the opening couplet was a towpath, one of several evocative watery locations, along which trudged the soldier played by Martins Imhangbe, who was watchable and plausible as the squaddie who can’t smell sulphur when it is right under his nose. His demonic predator was Mark Lockyer, his acting and dancing comic yet menacing, but without any moustache twirling. He also had the versatility to appear in different guises, yet remain the same character. The fine cast was completed by the buttonholing narration of Richard Katz, sometimes apart and chorus-like, sometimes closer to the action.