Review: RIP VAN WINKLE, Hoxton Hall

London company Gothic Opera return to Hoxton Hall for their fifth outing and their take on French composer Robert Planquette's Rip Van Winkle.

Founded in 2019 by sopranos Beatrice de Larragoiti, Charlotte Osborn and Alice Usher, the company seem made for the Halloween season:  their stated mission is to unearth and put on obscure operatic works which, in their words, take inspiration from “the uncanny atmosphere of the Gothic and supernatural”. 

Rip's plot is an amalgam of the two Washington Irving short stories Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and was a hit in Victorian London, running for 328 performances at the Comedy Theatre, now known as the Harold Pinter theatre. The choice of reviving it in a Victorian music hall is inspired, the intimate seating allowing the audience to lean into this long-forgotten piece.

As the programme itself admits, Rip isn’t Planquette’s most-admired opéra comique - its predecessor Les cloches de Corneville ran for an epic 705 performances at the now-demolished Folly Theatre and then the larger Globe Theatre - and it faded into obscurity in 1930s. 

Fans of operettas will be at home with the optimistic characters, jolly tone and utter absurdities on display here. It is these aspects that make the storyline relatable to a modern audience who may be, quite justifiably, ignorant of the politics of the 18th century colonists living in the foothills of New York’s Catskill mountains amid the American Revolution and, after Rip (Robert Garland) returns from his twenty-year nap, the election of George Washington and the first rash of self-governance for that nascent nation. 

Garland is a highly experienced singer, his baritone having been previously heard at the ENO, Garsington and Grange Park. Evangeline Cullingworth’s direction gives him the space and time to explore his character fully and he repays in spades with a performance full of verve and life. 

Opposite him, de Larragoiti plays his wife Gretchen who local lawyer and moneylender Derrick (a wonderfully villainous Stephen Whitford) has his eye on. She provides stout support in the first act and lights up the hall with her passionately delivered solo. Alongside her, Usher is a vivacious Katrina and Phoebe Rayner delivers the highlight of the night with her barnstorming turn on "The Nine Pins Song".

Decorating the stage and downstairs hall with rushes and trees and providing cabaret tables helps create an immersive design among which the action and actors flow. Elliot Squire’s costumes and set as well as Catja Hamilton’s lighting raise this production to another level, folding us into the playful nature of the work and its rural setting. Off to one side, the ever-smiling Robin Wallington conducts the small orchestra with charm and fluency. 

Cullingworth pushes the pace smartly over the two hours-plus running time. The ebullient performances from the cast and intelligent use of the intimate space add to the sheer joyfulness of a production which, like Rip, a chance to wake again beyond this Hallow’s Eve.

Rip Van Winkle continues at Hoxton Hall until Wednesday 1 November.

Photo credit: Craig Fuller

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