In 1897, a depressed Henry James wrote “The Turn of the Screw,” a novella inspired by a Victorian ghost story told to him at party. While James had written other ghost stories earlier in his career, “The Turn of the Screw” was a terrifying tale of a child-abuse, possession and losing control. James’ subject matter, as well as the way in which he conveyed the manic, neurotic deterioration of his characters, remains as horrifying and real today as it was more than 100 years ago.
To those familiar with the story, the current Meadows operatic adaptation may seem slightly disappointing in its inability to bring about the same fear brought through James’ eloquent words. Worse off, though, may be the people who are not familiar with the story, for though sung in English, much of the libretto is hard to follow or comprehend.
The great thing about opera though is that while the words are important, other elements such as vocal and instrumental music and elaborate stage designs can just as adequately convey a story. Made into an opera in 1954 by Benjamin Britten, “The Turn of the Screw” is wonderfully played by the Meadows Opera Orchestra. The score, beautiful in all its haunting, discordant and eerie glory, brings to life the psychological gravity felt in James’ novella.
While many of the vocal performances seem to lack emotional depth or an immediately real sense of fear, the scenes where many of the main characters sing at the same time, but not together, superbly encapsulate the general themes and moods of the story.
Another successful aspect of the production was the masterful stage design of Russell Parkman. With its threatening scale and just the right amount of abstraction, mixing real objects with ambiguous spaces, the sets gave weight to the increasingly ominous tone. Further, the lighting and use of projection screens gave the entire production a sense of realness and, at the same time, otherworldliness, which stays in line with the discordant fragmentation of the narrative and music.
Divided into eight scenes in each act, the opera adaptation attempts to structurally convey the foreboding evil, doom and panic that increases as the governess moves from natural uneasiness at taking a new position to the commanding need to protect the children to the final realization of one being lost forever. Somehow, though, with long pauses, numerous set changes and drawn-out sequences, the production seems to lose the manic emphasis on movement the narrative demands and becomes static and robotic.
One of the joys of James’ story was the ambiguity of whether or not the ghosts were actually present or just a manifestation of a stressed-out governess. It is the interplay of reality and non-reality that make ghost stories so scary, and unfortunately it is not always present in this production.
The wonderfully lit and ever-present chair at the corner of the stage, with the book the prologue was “read” from at the start of the opera, seems more ominous and terrifying than the ghosts or possessed children. It is with that book, resting quietly on the chair, that one begins to question what is real and what is imagined. The grey area between the two is at the heart of “The Turn of the Screw.”
