The Grain Store at Stonebridge, Wexford, 25/10/2026
Wexford Festival: Still, life…
Nate Ben Horin, Frasier Hickland (Music Directors, piano); Jennifer Murphy (violin); Eleanor Chapman (viola); Adrian Mantu (cello); Eilís Dexter (mezzo); Cuan Durkin (baritone); Éadaoin Hassett (soprano); Eiméar Harper (soprano); Yasmin O'Reilly (mezzo); Brian Mullen (narrator).
This year, the Community Opera at the Wexford Festival was a new commission, an entirely original immersive work combining elements of opera, video, imagery and text. I caught the performance of 25th October, mid-way through the premiere run. With libretto and music by Ailís Ní Ríain, based on a short story by William Goyen, ‘Still, life…’ is a site-responsive installation-opera. The venue, Wexford’s ‘Grain Store’, again played its customary role, with the performers (including 5 vocal soloists, a narrator and 17 Wexford townspeople) and audience intermingled and the action moving between two floors. ‘Still, life…’ investigates a small town's reaction to a man who decides to sit on top of a flagpole and stays there for forty days without explaining why. As individual mystery collides with collective conformity, we confront how society experiences mystery and individuality. The production is directed by the multi-talented Noeline Kavanagh. Costume is by film-maker and creative storyteller Elisa Rosciglioni. Video projection is by Louise Manifold. Elizabeth Drwal, involved in the last two years’ community operas, is credited with “Composer Liaison and Community Workshop Design”. Music direction is credited jointly to Nate Ben Horin and Frasier Hickland. Apart from the keyboard and pre-recorded soundtrack, instrumentation comprised a string trio: Jennifer Murphy (first violinist of the Spero Quartet), Eleanor Chapman (violist of the Dunev Quartet) and Adrian Mantu (cellist of the ConTempo Quartet).
The audience assembled downstairs. The floor and cast-iron pillars were decorated with what I would describe as “flotsam and jetsam”, such as might be found washed up on a beach, establishing a coastal location and a mood of solitude. The soundtrack began with prepared piano and chimes as townspeople wandered through the space, touching the suspended “decoration”. Violin and then viola appeared and joined the soundscape, similarly evoking solitude and disconnection. Some words from the narrator and feline sounds from vocalists led the way up the spiral staircase as the audience filed upstairs to the long narrow upper floor, similarly decorated, where there were seats in rows facing a central “aisle”. The string trio, now seated, played. All the music was ‘experimental’ (or, in the vernacular, “plinky-plonk”), combining live voices and string trio with recorded electroacoustic soundscape, including prepared piano and strings, and digitally manipulated brass. The two music directors were at opposite ends of the “aisle”, Nate conducting the strings and vocalists facing that way, Frasier conducting vocalists facing in his direction. As Frasier was seated on a higher stool and, until he began to conduct, all vocalisation directed to the stylite was in his direction, I did at first wonder whether he was representing Flagpole Man. A singer demanded “who is he?”. A vox pop, genuinely recorded on the streets of Wexford, asked the question “What do you think of Wexford people?” played on the soundtrack, echoed towards the end by whispers from the performing townspeople, standing behind the audience rows.
The narrator told of a town tired of war, exploitation, deprivation and empty politics. The people needed a distraction and one had mysteriously materialised. The initial reactions were puzzlement and curiosity. The first vocal character performance was from Irish-Iranian mezzo Yasmin O'Reilly, and it has stuck in my mind because it was vocally and dramatically superb. A young woman leaving a party the worse for wear has become separated from her friends and left to make her own way home. She suspects that they have deliberately given her the slip. She fixates on her “best friend”. “I thought she liked me … she does like me, doesn’t she?” she drunkenly demands of the stranger on the flagpole. He remains silent. She is the first of what will be the next phase of the town’s reaction to the stranger – seeking wisdom from a “guru”. But first, he is a celebrity and they bring him gifts, including food and drink, hoisted up the flagpole. After another isolated needy character piece (“I feel that life is closing in on me”), a Harvest Festival in the town brings a celebratory mood and indulgence in comfort food (cue jollity from community performers). A tall ship moors in the harbour beside the flagpole and a sailor reaches out and touches the stranger. “He is one of us”, they proclaim. But the stranger remains silent. The festival ends and the townspeople trudge reluctantly back to work. The moment passes.
“Who is he?”, baritone Cuan Durkin asks. The answer from characters, who he is to each individual, is different, yet all have in common an expectation that he can fill a void in their lives, bringing love to the loveless, hope to the hopeless, faith to the faithless. His silence amplifies their need. The community will not let him be; individually for selfish reasons. A pair of video screens, each on a wall facing half the audience, carried imagery supposedly matching the shifting mood of the community. Entirely subjectively, I found its symbolism opaque (and not only because I was viewing it around a cast-iron pillar). Sounds of sea and marsh birds on the soundtrack evoked solitude again.
“A young woman is found” hints at a lethal assault in the town, confirmed by a procession of veiled mourners. The mood of the town turns to suspicion. The stranger’s silence now provokes the question “What is he hiding?”. The community mood escalates towards violence: “He must be forced down, to keep us safe”. The stranger now looks thin and frail. The townspeople assemble, looking and pointing accusingly in the direction of the stranger and advance in a line, weaving through the audience. A single note with microtonal variation builds and fades. The soundtrack returns with a crescendo. “After 40 days and 40 nights, he is gone”.
So, is this an opera? Definitely yes. It tells a story with instrumental and vocal music, speech and images. As to the ‘site-responsive’ and ‘installation’ elements, modern realisations of conventional operas are often produced with such elements. But they don’t have to be. ‘Still, life…’ is not just ‘site-responsive’; it is, in my opinion and in its current form, ‘site-specific’. The writing, both text and music, is of the highest quality and the experience, as performed in the Grain Store at Stonebridge, is truly immersive, involving and provocative of thought. I have no hesitation in recommending it, as that specific experience. However, as a work drawing the audience member into a “search for meaning”, it would be meaningless in any other context. Unlike conventional operas, it cannot be meaningfully experienced as a CD or even a YouTube video. In the words of Dara Ó Briain, “You had to be there”. In that sense, highly recommended. And I shall be looking out for more from Yasmin O'Reilly.
Photo credit: Padraig Grant
Weblink: https://www.wexfordopera.com/programme/festival-programme/still-life