The Seal-Woman, Pitlochry review: 'magical'

The Seal-Woman, Pitlochry Festival Theatre ★★★★

Outdoor summer opera in the Highlands is a risky business. Indeed, on-off rain showers threatened to drench the Scots Opera Project’s production of Bantock’s The Seal-Woman at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s Explorers Garden in an appropriately watery authenticity. It could have been worse, though: ushers muttered that incessant downpours had meant the show’s opening night only made it as far as the interval.

But the al fresco production also posed challenges for its singers and trio of instrumentalists in terms of projection. Rather than what might have been unconvincing miking, however, the Scots Opera Project plumped for quiet intimacy – it took a bit of getting used to, especially with notable contributions from robins and blackbirds in the surrounding woodland canopy, but it ultimately suited Bantock’s slow-moving, wistful tale of a selkie trapped in womanly form when her lover – later husband – steals and hides her seal skin, and her overwhelming yearning to return to the sea (Freud would have had a field day).

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Bantock’s music meled Debussian suggestion, Wagnerian richness, Victorian sentimentality and a healthy dose of misty Celtic melody to gently evocative effect, and it was delivered with conviction by the production’s trio of piano, violin and harp led by Andrew Johnston.

Sioned Gwen Davies shone with inner fire and desire as the half-woman, half-seal, with supple support from Colleen Nicoll as her seal-sister. Fine, rich baritone Colin Murray was rather underused (Bantock’s fault, not the production’s) as a supporting fisherman, while Scots Opera Project founder/director/producer David Douglas simmered with energy as the controlling husband, his finely focused tenor soaring in expressive intensity.

A creditable community chorus – which had been directed by Nicoll – supplied vocal heft and simple but effective choreography in bigger scenes. Despite weather threats – or perhaps even because of them – it was really quite a magical production. And whoever booked the skein of honking geese to clip the treetops as the opera reached its melancholy conclusion deserves a special mention.

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