BYO Rake's Progress Review from Opera Magazine

Wonders will never cease! A positive review of my British Youth Opera production of THE RAKE'S PROGRESS - by the famous Hugh Canning:

"William Kerley's staging of The Rake's Progress, in William Fricker's spare, atmospheric sets and contemporary costumes - a timely credit-crunch Rake, to be sure - was one of the best I have seen anywhere, and certainly the finest BYO offering I have attended in recent years.

Kerley's Tom, the excellent Nicky Spence, was a vivid creation, a cocky, upwardly-mobile bovver-boy, a dead-cert winner for one of those ghastly but occasionally riveting TV greedfests, Dragon's Den of The Apprentice... He spivved up oleaginously as his fortunes prospered, aided by Derek Welton's charistmatic, Nosteratu-without-the-fangs Nick Shadow. His descent into madness was all the more moving for his earlier fallibility - here was a young man led astray by malevolence and left to bear sole responsibility for his over-optimism and gullibility. Kerley stage-managed the fable brilliantly, lending an uncomfortably topical feel to the Baba scenes, with reptilian party-goers happy to share in Tom's success only to turn into vultures at the auction of his wordly goods. This was a staging that looked chic despite the absence of scenery, and drew its finger-wagging moral trenchantly.

...Peter Robinson and the excellent BYO orchestra matched the slick discipline of this exemplary staging."


Crikey!