Aix Festival review: The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions — smiley and simplistic

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The best thing about The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions at this year’s Festival d’Aix-en-Provence is its title. Writer-director Ted Huffman and composer Philip Venables have written a piece of music theatre based on Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta’s eponymous 1977 cult fantasy novel, a “fairytale-cum-manifesto” (Artforum) with a queer cult following.

Mitchell and Asta were founding members of a queer commune in Ithaca, New York, and that sense of hippy utopian polemicism permeates the work. The “faggots” of the title and their friends are good, sweet, arty, generous and have lots of great sex. The world of “men”, by contrast, is brutal, avaricious, nasty and materialistic. After the protean patriarchal revolution of “civilisation” as we know it, and the moderating revolution of modernity, we await the next revolution, in which everything will be put right.

At one point the novel’s authors planned a children’s picture book, and it was this tone — simplistic, smiley, gently patronising — that characterised Huffman’s production. It was more like a ’70s “happening” than a festival opera staging, full of intersectional performers playing themselves, dressing up and running around. The audience was enjoined to sing along at one point; it felt as if we had stumbled into a kindergarten show, except for all the enthusiastic references to sex.

Venables’ music is utilitarian — nice little tunes, narrative function. The cast included some great musicians (conductor Yshani Perinpanayagam, lutenist Kerry Bursey, flautist Eric Lamb, baritone Themba Mvula, soprano Mariamielle Lamagat and gamba player Jacob Garside among them) and charismatic performers (dancer-choreographer Yandass, emcee Kit Green), all of them beaming at one another as if high on those one-with-the-universe party drugs; it felt a bit like a drag queen story hour where at least half the jokes are aimed at the parents.

Of course, the “faggots and their friends” have run the international opera world since time immemorial, but that does not mean that the opera world is a safe space for everybody. We really do need more transgender performers, louder queer voices, more body diversity and more people of colour in prominent roles in our music theatre world. But to herd them all together into one ghettoised corner where they themselves are the message seems a little like cheating.

★★★☆☆

An altogether less complex pleasure was Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian’s recital with pianist Lukas Geniušas at the Conservatoire Darius Milhaud. The two performed Russian songs by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, leaving no doubt as to why Grigorian is one of the most in-demand sopranos of our time. She has a full, rich, even tone across all registers, flawless intonation and tremendous agility, but it was her take-no-prisoners approach that really captured us as listeners. She gave everything, pushing expressive outbursts to the limits of possibility, trusting the public and herself to hold the moment. Geniušas matched her every breath, catching and amplifying the nuances, giving us both subtlety and power, and showed his own virtuosity in four Rachmaninov interludes.

★★★★★

Also accompanied by a superb pianist (Zaccai Curtis), alto saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin presented a short but powerful homage to John and Alice Coltrane two nights later in the painterly sandstone courtyard of the Hôtel Maynier D’Oppède. Hers, too, was a no-holds-barred, high-octane, charismatic performance, with plenty of showmanship and an easy virtuosity.

So there are women and people of colour at this year’s Aix-en-Provence Festival; just not directing or appearing in the key roles of central productions. That could change. Aix is in an ideal position to set international standards by bringing the marginalised in from the margins, by celebrating diversity in all its unruly glory; they might even find that their already high quality increases yet further. It’s time.

★★★★☆

Festival runs to July 24, festival-aix.com