Review: Armistice Day Concert: What If?, Royal Overseas League

Review: Armistice Day Concert: What If?, Royal Overseas League

Somewhere, somehow, classical song recitals seem to have become terribly formal affairs. Black tie. Stiff backs. Beautiful diction. They’re predominantly for German Lieder songs or worthy settings of long-dead English poets or, often, both. I have, rather cruelly, imagined audiences eager for self-improvement enduring them rather than necessarily enjoying them.

Imagine, then, how intrigued I was by an invite to What If? It promised radical reinvention; “a play and a song recital combined – with a twist!”First things first, What If? is not a play. Not even close. It is a story, yes. Told well, with some fun characterisation and lots of genuine humour. But you can tell writer and performer Kieran Rayner’s natural home is opera rather than drama because he has a cavalier attitude to narrative. Action seems arbitrary. Huge events are skipped over; being sent to prison as a WW1 conscientious objector is covered in, I kid you not, just two lines. And endings are almost unforgivably perfunctory. If you promise a wedding, let us enjoy the wedding as a finale, for God’s sake. If you finish before the proposal, we won’t even know if she says yes!

To be fair, Rayner and his director Guido Martin-Brandis have complicated matters by asking the audience to guide the story from time to time, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-Style. When our hero is deciding whether to sign up for battle or stay at home as a pacifist, for example, we are asked to vote by raising our hands. We send him to war, appropriately for a performance arranged to mark Armistice Day.

Rayner has set his tales (we’re told there are eight possible routes) around the First World War. All strands follow nice lad Max, rough-and-tumble Sam and politically awakened Lily in a love triangle. It’s all slightly reminiscent of a Hardy novel, doomed from the start but suitably emotionally charged. Rayner is Max and, in character, also acts as our genial host. Chats to the audience are warm, inviting and, as we’re asked to ponder life as a river with many bends and tributaries, often genuinely affecting. Rayner plays Sam and Lily, too, when the need demands, with gusto. The best of the action, though, comes in the form of witty interactions with his pianist, Gamal Khamis. There’s a recurring joke I won’t spoil, but it is delivered so well that it is almost worth the ticket price alone.

So storytelling, humour with songs? Is that about it? Not really, because the songs most definitely come first. Rayner is a fine baritone, and musically, this still feels like a serious recital from a significant talent who made his Royal Opera House debut in 2022. I particularly enjoyed the drama of Schubert’s De Zwerg (The Dwarf) and Finzi’s setting of Hardy’s The Too Short Time, which was simply beautiful. If you’ll pardon my informality, the rest of the programme is full of similar bangers. Music fans will find it a feast of joys.  

Rayner and his colleagues have made a great start challenging the status quo. They tell a story through song without the shiny artifice of musical theatre or heavy pretention of full-blown opera. The audience participation is easy to enjoy, too. Yes, there are gaping narrative holes to fill, and I’m not sure we actually gain much by steering the plot ourselves, but I suspect, overall, this approach might well catch on, and classical song recitals might yet shake off their stuffy reputation. This can only be a good thing. 

Written & Performed by: Kieran Rayner
Pianist: Gamal Khamis
Directed by: Guido Martin-Brandis

What if? was performed for one night at the Royal Overseas League, but you can read more on the artist’s website, here.