Small in scale yet ambitious in its intended impact: the description fits the Spitalfields music festival as much as it does Cover Her, one of two new music-theatre works that this year that took audiences into two of east London’s black-box performance spaces.
Composed by Litha Efthymiou and staged at Rich Mix in Shoreditch, Cover Her juxtaposed two stories: of the 3rd-century Christian martyr St Eulalia, and of a woman today testifying against the man who abused her 30 years earlier. Eulalia was represented by the urgent, fluid dancing of Harriet Parker-Beldeau and by the soprano Keren Motseri, who sang her story as described in a contemporary Latin poem. Actor, director and scriptwriter Jenny Ayres played the modern woman.
