John Tavener's latest stage-work, The Fool, was written for the amazingly versatile talents of the gogmagogs, the seven-piece ensemble of string-playing actors and singers, and premiered at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. The work dramatises the theological archetype of the Holy Fool, chosen by Tavener and his spiritual advisor and librettist, Mother Thekla, for its relevance to the corruption of contemporary society.
Thekla and Tavener reveal the essential piety of the fool through seven scenes inspired by Christian festivals, charting a journey from the depths of Good Friday to the transcendence of Easter. The fool begins by debauching and mocking religious and social conventions. But as the work progresses, he becomes an emblem of purity, brought about through his continual self-abasement. Finally, he comes to understand that Christ "has given life", and repeats this phrase in unadulterated, diatonic bliss.
Matthew Sharp's performance in the central role displays consummate theatrical invention. As one of the gogmagogs' cellists, Sharp is used to being asked to act and sing as well as play an instrument. But as Tavener's Fool, Sharp combines this musical multi-tasking with eating and regurgitating steak, and performing acrobatics with a metal bucket full of holy water - while commanding enough vocal and stage presence to carry the work's drama.
The skill of Lucy Bailey's direction and Bunny Christie's designs is in making Tavener's highly specific - and potentially stifling - religious imagery speak for a wide range of experience. From the first scene, they create a compelling interplay between the isolation of Sharp's Fool and the different groups in the drama, from devout pilgrims to drunken revellers.
The other gogmagogs are cast as plaster-clad deities, in costumes which merge with the blasphemous daubings on the walls of the set. They begin by commentating on the Fool's predestined fate, and their music frames the Fool's inebriated ramblings and his sacrilegious sarcasm. Later, they become worshippers at the Cross, which the Fool, now dressed in a dishevelled suit, cannot bear to see.
The final scenes make the Fool's conflict with the world even more overt. Joined by the Viva Voce choir in imitation of a Christmas and then an Easter party, the Fool stands apart and mute, alone in seeing the true meaning behind this worldly chaos.
Tavener's repetition of large paragraphs of this clinching drama ritualises the everyday noises of radios playing and people talking. But this conclusion also breaks the spell of the more subtle images of the Fool's individuality in the earlier scenes, and seems over-emphatic and unbalanced in comparison.
the gogmagogs perform at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London SE1 (020-7960 4242), on Monday and Tuesday.
