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The Handmaid’s Tale review – ENO’s production of Atwood’s dystopia is chilling but slow to convince
Coliseum, LondonPoul Ruder’s opera is at its most effective in its quietest moments, with the all-female production boasting strong performances from leads Emma Bell and Kate Lindsey
Years before Elisabeth Moss first put on Offred’s red kirtle and glowered at the camera from under a white visor, years before the TV series took Margaret Atwood’s book way beyond its ending, there was The Handmaid’s Tale: the opera, by the composer Poul Ruders and librettist Paul Bentley. It was premiered in Copenhagen in 2000 and staged at English National Opera three years later. Now, slightly revised by its authors – and, after Trump and 6 January, seeming more urgently relevant than ever - it’s back in a new staging, the first opera directed here by Annilese Miskimmon since she became ENO’s artistic director.
We are at a symposium listening to a newly discovered cassette tape, an artefact from Gilead, presented by an academic played by the actor Camille Cottin. Offred’s voice speaks to us first through the tape, sounding as delicate and distant as old shellac records – and then Kate Lindsey takes over in person, beginning a magnetic central performance in which it’s her voice, with its superbly controlled mix of sweetness and substance, that reveals as much as her actions.
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