Felix is working out an idea at the piano. What does his sister Fanny think? It needs more contrast, more dissonance, she tells him and, settling herself at the keyboard, demonstrates her meaning. The melody she plays is familiar. We now know it as the wedding march, part of Felix Mendelssohn’s incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Both Mendelssohn siblings were talented composers, conductors and performers, but, in the first half of the 19th century only one could expect to gain public recognition.
In his new, high-spirited, fantastical, quasi-period comedy, Calum Finlay plays off the contrasts of the possibilities open to each of the siblings by setting up a scenario where Fanny pretends to be Felix so as to take up an invitation to perform for Queen Victoria. Accompanied by her fiance, Willhelm (George Howard), and by another struggling female composer, Clara Schumann, she sets off across Europe, the women facing up to sexist encounters along the way. The furious Felix (Corey Montague-Sholay) follows in hot pursuit, along with their mother (Kim Ismay); the final-leg, accelerando, carriage race along the Mall is a Wacky Races-Ben-Hur mash up.
Finlay’s mix of farce, cartoon and pantomime, seriousness and sentiment is entertaining, from moment to moment, but too capriciously unstructured to be really satisfying. An excessive emphasis on fun disrupts the drama: instead of the action growing out of the interplay of the characters, it is too obviously shaped to service the needs of particular situations. This is especially apparent in the development of the relationship between Fanny and Clara (nonetheless invested with nuance by Charlie Russell and Jade May Lin, respectively).
Staging, under Katie-Ann McDonough’s direction, is witty and fast-paced, facilitated by Sophia Pardon’s designs (sight-and-sound gags deliver laughs and emotional impact). Yshani Perinpanayagam’s musical direction and additional compositions are both subtle and tonally effective. All six performers (last but not least, Harry Kershaw, in several roles) strike the right chords.
