Barnes Green on a lovely Spring evening is a fine setting for an evening of Purcell. This week at the OSO Arts Centre, overlooking the pond, audiences have enjoyed a retelling of the final weeks of the life of the composer. At the start of the action we find Purcell languishing in bed with night sweats as he struggles to compose songs for the latest play in which he is involved. This scene then opens out into a retrospective framework in which the dialogue and the musical numbers touch on different episodes in his life, whether as a young boy during the Great Fire of London or in his relations with his wife, Frances, and the singers with whom he mixed. A trio of musicians provide play instrumental selections and also offer accompaniment to two sopranos. On the night the actor-sopranos were unwell and so there vocal parts were provided by two able substitutes. What we have here essentially is a dramatised pasticcio, carefully framed by author Clare Norburn for modern audiences.
The first point of comment rests on the quality of the music and the music-making. Purcell is truly the gift that keeps on giving – just when you think you know all of his output further ravishing numbers are revealed, whether saucy or serious, that provoke new admiration and delight. This was clearly the experience of the audience for the evening, and is perhaps the greatest strength of the show. Moreover, Norburn’s work does a real service in showcasing music that is otherwise not much performed. Purcell was often writing alongside other composers in plays that are hardly revivable now, so the music can lack context in concert performance. Here it more naturally emerges from the texture of the drama of the composer’s life with words shifting gear into music, just as in a modern musical. For example, the superb mad scene From Rosy Bowers, probably Purcell’s last composition, would make little sense if performed in isolation, but here is a fine culminating point as illness closes in around its creator. When so little is actually known about Purcell’s life there is an opportunity to fill the gaps and situate a whole range of works that combine supreme technical invention and abudant sensual and sensuous appeal.
The dramatic pulse beats most memorably where there is this tight fit between music and situation, and there are points where the connections are more tenuous and less compelling, where showing gives way to telling. However, overall, Niall Ashdown in the lead role, and Heloise Bernard and Sarah Lambie as the two rivalrous women in his life, provide a stable focus to the action and flesh out their characters plausibly. The two women make the most of their opportunities in the comic Dialogue between two Wives, and Ashdown captures a broad spectrum of moods from saucy self-indulgence through to the reflective gravity of the Elegy on the Death of Queen Mary. Felicity Hayward and Laura Coppinger sang with idiomatic grace as the two singers drafted in at the last minute and the three musicians not only played their parts but added special effects too.
All in all this was a fine tribute to the genius of Purcell that deserves a further theatrical life as an accessible introduction to aspects of his work that are still too little known.
Writer: Clare Norburn
Director: Nicholas Renton
Cast: Niall Ashdown, Heloise Bernard, Sarah Lambie
Until 22 May 2026
1 hour 30 mins with interval