Budget cuts may have compelled English National Opera to rely more heavily on revivals this season, but a fresh outing for Danish composer Poul Ruders’s operatic version of The Handmaid’s Tale is no bad thing. With women’s rights under pressure worldwide, Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel has lost none of its relevance or ability to chill.
Set in an America hijacked by a right-wing, patriarchal theocracy, the falling birthrate has forced elite males and their infertile wives to rely on “handmaids” – women with a proven ability to conceive – to produce their children. Offred – literally a woman “owned” by Fred –was caught escaping across the Canadian border and sent to a Red Centre, a facility run by older women known as Aunts. Assigned to the Commander, a high-level politico, and his wife Serena Joy, she is drawn bit by bit into a mysterious network of conspiracies.
