Wanamaker Playhouse and L'Ormindo are a match made in heaven

What if you had the opportunity to nip back in time to see a Baroque opera in the year it was performed?  A sensuous, candlelit evening of fine music, rich costumes and virtuoso singing, performed in an exquisite gem of a 17th century-playhouse so new its wood was still seasoning?  You could laugh, cry, be close enough to the performers to share a wink, and still make it home to your 21st century bed before midnight.

Sound too good to be true?  Time travel is reality at the newly-opened Sam Wanamaker playhouse within the Globe Theatre complex, where they're currently working with the Royal Opera House to stage L'Ormindo.  This is one of the most magical, completely joyful cultural experiences I've had in a long time.

Just as the Globe strives to give us an exact reproduction of the open-roofed, circular venues of Shakespeare's day, the Wanamaker takes us forward a few decades to the intimate, jewel-box theatres of the high Jacobean age.  The Globe's fantastic, but you can never completely maintain the illusion of time travel.  It's too big, so the modern audience is always in your line of sight.  And the open roof looks onto a light-polluted sky crossed by planes on their Heathrow approach.

The Wanamaker is tiny, with just 340 seats spread around two levels of horseshoe gallery and a small pit.  The stage and its players fill your vision.  They're picked out by the beguiling golden glow of the six chandeliers filled with beeswax tapers, and more candles in wall sconces and on the stage.  There are no electric lights.  I don't know how they managed it with Health and Safety, but there aren't even any obnoxious neon exit signs to break the mood.  There's a strict ban on any kind of camera or phone coming out of your pocket. The illusion is complete, and lushly magnificent.

Seeing anything in this space would be a treat.  Seeing an early opera, written to be performed in a space exactly like this, and staged in rich historic costumes glittering under the candles, was a complete delight.

I'll admit, I approached this with a bit of trepidation.  We'd seen our first baroque opera, Handel's Rinaldo, last summer at Longborough, and loved it so much we wanted to try another.  I'd never heard of the opera or its composer, Francesco Cavalli … but why not take a punt?  It was only after I booked the tickets that I read that the opera had debuted in 1644, had a single run in Venice, then hadn't been revived until 1967.  Oh, dear.  How good can something be that was immediately dropped, and forgotten for 300 years?

I need not have worried.  The highly-entertaining if lightweight plot sees two heroes fighting to gain the
love of a young and nubile queen in an unsatisfying marriage to her very old king.  The setting is a mythical North Africa, allowing for dramatic Moorish costumes.  (And creative.  One, which is designed with upward extensions to provide the illusion that the standing queen is actually in bed, is magnificent.)  There's ribald humour, a bit of sorcery, adventure, trickery, unlikely plot twists, and everyone ends up happy.  It's a merry romp, in other words, and the cast clearly enjoy themselves throughout, able to work brilliantly off an audience that's so close it's practically part of the action.

The music isn't particularly memorable, and there are no big hit arias, but it's perfectly pleasant and gave the performers a chance to show off some vocal pyrotechnics.  While I didn't walk away humming anything in particular from this show, I ended up with the duet from Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea in my head for the next day.  The music is similar in style and, in fact, the two operas were written within a year of each other.

I can't imagine L'Ormindo carrying a big opera house, but it was perfect for a setting like this.  The production team used the space to maximum effect.  The chamber orchestra provides music from the balcony above the stage.  Prologues for each act are provided by "spirits" lowered from the ceiling to hover in mid-air, just like in those grand 17th-century court masques.  The cast uses the whole auditorium, entering from side doors, walking through the aisles, hanging off balconies, interacting with audience members.  This works particularly well when they're playing it for laughs, which this opera affords aplenty.

The biggest effect, of course, is the candlelight.  It's as much of a cast member as any of the singers, with chandeliers being raised and lowered to create different moods, and more candelabra being moved on and off stage as part of the action.  One of the best scenes, both dramatically and musically, is a duet between lovers who believe their end is coming, with black-clad spirits extinguishing the candles one by one as their energy and hope drains.  Of course, the stage is blazing with renewed light by the end, as three sets of lovers prepare to live happily ever after.

You won't be able to see this production, sadly, as its run is sold out.  With so few seats, I figure pretty much everything in The Wanamaker will be.  So if this sounds good to you, make an effort to see what's on, when, and get tickets as soon as they come on sale.  This has to be one of the most magical and unique experiences you can have in London right now.