Kevin Kelly’s new play, Turning The Screw, returns to London in the new auditorium of the King’s Head Theatre.
It’s 1953, and composer Benjamin Britten seeks a young boy to sing the role of Miles in his planned opera of The Turn of the Screw.
The government and police were cracking down on homosexual activity – still illegal – and Britten is committed to making his opera ‘perfect’.
Enter a youngster, rough round the edges, a chorister at Hampton Court. This is the 12-year old David Hemmings, long before big screen stardom beckoned.
While exploring the story behind the opera – a young boy under the influence of a malevolent older man – Britten becomes besotted with Hemmings.
It’s a difficult play, almost coming close to celebrating the pederast while recognising the imbalance of power of the man over the child (and the child over the man?).
Now and again, Kelly’s script seems muddled. There’s a lengthy dream sequence, a bizarre monologue, and some story contradictions around Britten’s yen to be cautious about his homosexuality.
It may be hard to gauge why this play exists, however well it is staged and performed – and it is, especially by Gary Tushaw as Britten and Simon Willmont as his lover and collaborator Peter Pears.
Britten was a Lord, and the creator of A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, which probably introduced most of us to classical music at a formative age.
The idea of a person of privilege taking advantage of a person unequal in age or class has been explored before in drama. Why this story, and why now?
Covering up for such a person is not just common but inevitable, even shifting the blame on to the innocent. As Hemmings, Liam Watson captures the innocence and playfulness of youth as well as its unthinking cruelty.
It was as chilling to hear him voice the myth that all gay men prey on children as it was for the adults to shield the abuser by his medal from the Queen.
Are we saying, then, that we must separate the personal and professsional, the artist and the art?
As some artists have been revealed or rumoured to be abusers, it has been a constant topic to wrestle with – and the complicity of those who kept quiet (in this play, Jonathan Clarkson’s director Basil Coleman).
Are we hinting that some pre-teens are far from innocent? Miles in the Henry James novella certainly showed disturbing tendencies and knowledge far beyond his age.
At the back of Laura Harling’s set, a structure represents windows that become transparent, hinting at ghosts. Characters peer through accusations from long past.
In a set design filled with frames (windows, mirrors?) it seems everyone is watching or being watched.
The music, when we hear it, is beautiful, particularly in a plaintive piece by Pears, which accompanies an unwise midnight swim by Britten and his new protege.
Tim McArthur’s production uses an abstract feel while utilising the theatre’s space with characters entering via the stairs, observing from corners, or bringing a piano to life.
The little moments of longing are beautifully charged: Imogen Holst (Jo Wickham), daughter of composer Gustav, putting her own career on hold and yearning for Britten; Pears nursing little hurts each time a young boy captivates his partner.
Turning the Screw is at the King’s Head Theatre until 10 Mar with tickets here.
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Image credit: Polly Hancock