Coram Boy: a spellbinding, ambitious drama that grips you from start to finish
When Helen Edmundson’s adaptation of Coram Boy, the Whitbread-winning children’s novel by Jamila Gavin about adventure-beset 18th century boy choristers, was first seen in 2005 at the National, it cemented the success of Nicholas Hytner’s regime.
In programming the piece as part of his first season running Chichester, Justin Audibert re-affirms his commitment to works of an ambitious, epic scale and reveals a preoccupation with powerlessness and abuse. (He opened with The Other Boleyn Girl, which laid bare the vulnerable status of women at Henry VIII’s court, is poised to present Pinter’s The Caretaker, about a hard-bitten down-and-out, and his big summer musical is Oliver!)
It’s also thrilling to see burgeoning musical talent, and youthful singing élan, given scope. Even so, just as Coram Boy won critical acclaim first time round but didn’t garner the big awards, or – especially in New York – display lasting commercial clout, this production by Anna Ledwich, as spellbinding as it is, demonstrates afresh that for all its potency Gavin’s tale can seem knottily plotty, even contrived, and the stuff of surface characterisation, when set on stage.
That said, this revival re-asserts, in the first instance, Gavin’s Dickensian capacity to relay the mortifying treatment of children across the social spectrum. At one end of the scale, there’s Alexander Ashbrook, a gifted 14-year-old treble who at the start is facing removal from Gloucester cathedral choir-school because his voice is on the verge of breaking and his aristo father wants to march him to the adult grindstone. At the other end, there’s Toby, thought to be the son of an African slave, who gets subjected to grim, racialised exploitation in ‘polite’ London society.
Yoking these narrative strands is the “Coram Hospital”, the famous refuge and school for foundling children, established by the benevolent sailor Thomas Coram. In the first half, its existence is a means by which the villainous Otis Gardiner (a formidably predatory Samuel Oatley) procures money from desperate mothers, only to pocket it and dispose of their offspring. In the second half, we move to London, but the villainy is redoubled, even as we glimpse the composer Handel benignly helping to train the Coram boys and rehearsing a rendition of Messiah.
While the means by which everything threads together is the stuff of no little artifice, under Ledwich’s detailed direction the evening attains the propulsive watchability of a page-turner. Simon Higlett’s set-design, incorporating an upper-level, with the musicians at one end, combines grandeur with intimacy. And Ledwich shows a painterly eye for beautiful stage composition, lighting and shadows stirring otherworldliness and intrigue. The moments when Otis’ hulking son Meshak (Aled Gomer) is seized by fits and the ensemble freezes or slows around him are particularly effective.
The task of spiriting up the larky, warbling lads is taken in the main by capable young actresses but this gender-blind approach works fine, and Louisa Binder makes a dazzling stage debut as the troubled but tenacious young Alexander, with Jewelle Hutchinson later memorable too as the monstrously treated Toby. We don’t see Thomas Coram, and too little of Handel, but we hear enough of the latter’s heavenly music, sung live but with augmenting recorded contributions from the local cathedral choir, to be left in awe of his works and ashamed anew at the brutish state of England they encountered.
Until June 15. Tickets: 01243 781312; cft.org.uk
