The Devil Inside, Stuart MacRae’s take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story The Bottle Imp probably shares much of the effects of that infamous green alcoholic mind-bender Absinthe, known as The Devil in the Bottle.
The story is transposed from Hawaii to a contemporary society, a city where the first of our “victims” has made his fortune on the property market and where individuals are, in the words of one the get-rich tycoon, like insignificant ants to be, literally, looked down upon.
This Devil is an imp that grants wishes, a rather grown up version of the Genie in the Lamp. However, there is a price to for the free wishes – your soul in Hell for eternity if you die still owning it. Thus Aladdin meets Faust. How to break the curse? Sell the bottle to another person for less than you paid for it.
The story follows the downfall of one such individual, Richard, whose greed convinces him he can buy the green bottle, get rich quick, and then sell it on. It actually starts with him getting his friend James to buy it (as he has the cash) and then buys it from him when the friend has amassed a fortune but wants to find genuine love, a wife and child – and save his soul.
The morale of the tale seems to be good cannot come of evil so despite selling on the bottle to Richard disaster strikes when rather than a child grown in her womb his wife Catherine contacts terminal cancer. To save her he decide to buy back the bottle (even if condemning his soul to damnation) but such has been Richard’s battle with the bottle he has been selling it and buying it back over and over again so the price is now it can only be purchased for the smallest denomination coin in circulation.
Ben McAteer and Nicholas Sharratt
Nicholas Sharratt and Steven Page
Oh dear. How can it be sold on? Fortunately Catherine is better versed in international capitalism (the sub plot of the opera?) and that other countries have lower value currencies and off they go (in a rather silly plane aeroplane model that crosses behind a screen) to find a jolly foreigner to fob it off on. Without being a little imp and telling the entire plot, there are several other twists and turns with an ending that I guessed about half way through but I am renowned as a film/drama spoiler for the same reason.
Contemporary opera is often not the most accessible of art forms but here Louise Welsh’s libretto and Stuart MacRae’s score work together well although I would not for a moment suggest this music will appeal to a mass market. It is vibrant and edgy, communicating the psychological and emotional crises of the characters without lyricism and melody many would crave.
Steven Page
Matthew Richardson and Samal Blake have given the co-producers, Music Theatre Wales and Scottish Opera, a simple and effective staging (apart from the silly aeroplane), with much use of back-lit screens creating silhouettes. Quite how they did the clever swirling light in the green bottle is beyond me and was suitably creepy without the need for ghastly, ghoulish gimmickry. I am not sure whether the psychiatrist ink blot test imagery was necessary to underpin the psychological aspect of the work but the slowly descending blackness on that back screen was effective. Is that Devil in the Bottle or Inside us all?
The singing was exemplary from Nicholas Sharratt and Ben McAteer as the friends and Rachel Kelly as the wife and Steven Page with the double role of the old man who first sells on the bottle and then the down and out who is part of the denouement. Sharratt’s portrayal of an addict descending into self-destruction is fabulous.
Michael Rafferty conducts his musicians with characteristic flair.
Sherman Cymru
Main image: Rachel Kelly.
Photography: Bill Cooper