While the Royal Court Theatre collaboration between Dutch chanson star WENDE, designer Chloe Lamford, composer Isobel Waller-Bridge, director Imogen Knight and half a dozen playwrights and novelists is described as musical theatre, this nomenclature is deceptive. The Promise is theatrical but could more appropriately described as one of the most compelling electronic alt-rock concerts you’ve ever seen.
The Promise was born in London’s Royal Court Theatre, a venue that gave life to works by W.S Gilbert and The Rocky Horror Show. Just as Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror transformed the musical theatre genre by fusing B-movie horror with rock’n’roll and gender fluidity, The Promise breathes new life into the art song cycle. The interplay between poets, composers and vocalists is not a new phenomenon: the rich tradition of classical art songs can still be heard in music halls and recital centres the world over. In modern music, singers obviously still do collaborate with lyricists and composers: there was the Brill Building, Stock Aitken Waterman, and now teams of pop and R’n’B producers churn out Billboard top 100 hits.
The Promise is such a revelation, though, because it unites the lighting, staging, sound design and choreography techniques of a Lady Gaga concert, the song interpretation and audience engagement prowess of a chanson artist, and the literary lyricism of a team of accomplished wordsmiths. The aim is not to top the charts but to pierce the hearts. WENDE arrived at the Royal Court Theatre with an existential list of questions about womanhood, motherhood, and being: questions that can’t be answered just with words; the unity of text, music, vocalisation, movement and light might get closer to the truth.
The Promise is over an hour and a half of almost uninterrupted musical storytelling, but it never gets boring: there’s stylistic shifts, from solo piano torch songs to throbbing dark electronica. WENDE, bathed in a warm spotlight or concealed in darkness, climbs platforms, sprints around the round, sits in laps, and brazenly crowd surfs in the silver haired Adelaide Festival crowd. While the show is loaded with great songs, the ones written by British playwright EV Crowe and poet and playwright Sabrina Mahfouz are the highlights: show opener Dark Black Pool, modern dating and social media lament Lonely Bitch, the titular The Promise, and Mahfouz’s Prayer and Good Women. The Promise plunges deep into the dark places but then emerges from them with a crowd swelling euphoria that can’t be described: you can only stand, swiftly, and applaud.
No Comments