Micro-opera at the King's Head pub theatre

The King’s Head Pub Theatre

The King’s Head pub in Upper Street, Islington, consists (for the present) of a small, old fashioned bar area, with a horseshoe bar and just enough space for a few tables and an open fire, and, immediately behind the bar, a small theatre. Or rather, there is a room that serves as a theatre, seating just over 100 on fairly squashed benches. (The theatre will close soon and move to new purpose-built premises around the corner. So hurry if you want to experience the unique atmosphere for the first, or last, time.)

When, as is often, a performance is sold out, the bar becomes extremely crowded, both before the metaphorical curtain goes up (there is in fact no curtain) and at any interval. Not only do the audience have nowhere else to mill around in, especially in bad weather (there is otherwise a pavement to be blocked), but the bar, being a pub, always has a decent number of people using it as such.

The jostling intimacy of pub goers and audience has been put to good use by the theatre’s maestros.

(I should say at this point that the reason for my several visits has been to see opera – well-known classical works imaginatively adapted for a small cast of 4 or 5 singers accompanied by 2 or 3 musicians. Of which more later.)

To return to the bar. Two or three years ago the opera was La Boheme. The production contrived an interval just before the famous scene in a restaurant, which contains a lot of jolly chorus singing. We trooped out to the bar, which, as usual, became crowded as the audience stumbled past, and over, seated pub goers. Things settled down. 

After some minutes, one of the drinkers leaning against the bar suddenly pushed back – and started singing. Immediately the song (from the Opera) was taken up by another group of “drinkers” seated unobtrusively at a corner table. It dawned on us that the opera had come into the pub. The singer from the bar, still singing, shouldered through the throng to join his colleagues. Pub goers looked incredulous, some annoyed (and some regulars were doubtless expecting the episode). It was a complete surprise to most of us in the audience. Pub, theatre, reviews and friends who had already been kept the secret well. It was a true coup de theatre. After a while, the bar-opera was paused, we trooped back in; and what passes for normality in micro-opera resumed.

Putting on opera in a tiny space, with a group of performers pared to the musical bone (for reasons of cost as well as room – even a sold-out performance does not bring in monster revenues) necessarily means losing a lot of the ingredients that go into making opera so compelling. No swelling orchestra (a couple of accompanists); no vast and stirring choruses (no chorus at all, really, apart from 3 or 4 people singing off stage); no magnificent sets (a table and 2 or 3 chairs reappear in production after production, doing make believe duty for thrones and altars, and even for table and chairs). There may be some scenery on the walls – but there’s no room on the floor.

Productions have to be freely adapted to offer musical and dramatic essentials rather than grand spectacle. Mozart’s Magic Flute, for example, forgoes the great set pieces in Sorastro’s temple that dominate the second half. On the other hand, certain intimate works, such as Tosca, translate very well to a small arena. In fact, their intensity may be better appreciated here than on some grand opera stage. (I should like to see Otello performed.)

The theatre has, so far as I know from experience, two choices for configuring its space. One is conventional: to put all the seats on one side and have a “stage” (ie the rest of the room) on the other. This is clearly a choice for the director, depending on his or her vision of the production’s choreography. But this conventional layout does have the unfortunate effect that, on entering the room, the audience may feel that it is about to see a school play put on by an exceptionally hard up primary school.

The second option is better: put the audience on three sides, with the action taking place in a small rectangular space in the middle. Those seated in the front row had better watch their feet – the performers will be inches away and could easily be tripped. But the intimacy can be thrilling, and the intensity of certain works correspondingly greater.

The performers are generally young singers building a career. They are mostly good, some very good, although they cannot yet match the stars of grand opera – which is probably just as well in so small a venue.

Apart from the bar trick, La Boheme has inspired another imaginative bit of audience participation. Another – very recent – production stayed put in the theatre. During the same restaurant drinking scene, the singer playing a young woman accompanying a wealthy sugar daddy (or perhaps client) decides to stick the bar bill run up by the impoverished, students, artists and writers on to her companion. This means a tour de force of sung blandishments.

In the pared-down cast, no-one represents the sugar-daddy. So the singer plonked herself on the lap of a man in front row. She put her arms around his neck, and used him as a prop for her performance. He didn’t know what to do, or where to look. It was hilarious for the rest of us, but worked dramatically.

At the end of the opera when the performers took their bows, and after the usual plea for donations,  one of the female performers announced that that favoured, or excruciating, seat number was such and such, should anyone want to pass that information on to family and friends.

Clearly, family and friends, now put in the know, could confer a high art lap dancing experience on men they esteemed, or more likely, wished to thoroughly embarrass.

Oct 2017