The “Borough” in which Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes takes place, loosely associated with the composer’s gentrified Aldeburgh, has been relocated sixty miles down the East Anglian coast to Jaywick Sands in Deborah Warner’s powerfully reimagined production. Jaywick is the deprived estuary town that brought the setting into focus for Warner and her designer Michael Levine. It’s a place where decades-long neglect and collapsing local industry have brutalised the community, creating the necessary conditions for the construction of scapegoats such as Grimes. The thuggish resentment of this neo-fascist vigilante mob reaches a chilling climax when an effigy of Grimes is pitchforked and battered to death by torchlight. Peter Mumford’s lighting and Kim Brandstrup’s choreography greatly enhance the dramatic power of this scene. The grisly realism is skillfully balanced by Warner, however, with dreamlike episodes including those incorporating an aerialist (Jack Horner) representing first the ghost of the apprentice and finally the body of Grimes settling on the sea floor.
