“Ben and Imo” at Orange Tree Theatre
Simon Jenner in South-West London
26 April 2025
“I pull people in,” says Benjamin Britten in September 1952, to a woman who’s breezed in from Dartington to deposit her worldly possessions – three bags – on the floor. “I enchant them, then I despise them. I have to draw on my cruelty.” It’s a warning new musical assistant Imogen Holst says she’ll note. And she’ll only stay in Aldeburgh a year. But if she’s drawn in and spat out, is there a way back? Mark Ravenhill’s Ben and Imo originally premiered in March last year at the RSC. Now with the same cast and much of the creative team, it’s revived at the Orange Tree, again helmed by former RSC Acting Director Erica Whyman.
Samuel Barnett as Ben. Photo credit: Ellie Kurttz.
Ben and Imo was originally a 2013 Radio 3 play written for Britten’s centenary. Then an atmospheric if fractious three-hander with musicians, it’s now altered beyond recognition as an excoriating two-hander which spills into edgily joyous moments that tilt to disaster. One of Britten’s works was entitled Let’s Make an Opera. That’s what he must produce in nine months for Covent Garden: Gloriana, a “British national opera” to mark Elizabeth II’s coronation. Yet it uneasily probes the wounds of her namesake Elizabeth I. For now Ben needs Imo.
In Samuel Barnett’s and Victoria Yeates’ outstanding performances, there’s an erotic charge between a gay man and self-described “spinster” who declares she’s happily given up sex, despite once giving (shocked) admirers naked photographs of herself in dancing poses. Which Imo playfully executes for Ben in sensible clothing.
The role dropped from the 2013 play is suave Lord Harewood, someone whom Britten himself later dropped. Indeed Britten famously “corpsed” people, even announcing it in advance. Corpsing simmers here. Removing Harewood’s role (his words taken by Imo) strips the gloves off too in this drama with wild jigs. Imo’s and sometimes Ben’s dancing in Lucy Cullingford’s movement looks like a rite of autumn.
Barnett makes a superb Jekyll and Hyde of Ben’s prickly nature. Executing feints and surprises he invites, seduces then snaps off in silences preceding sadistic outbursts. Still, Ben warned Imo in advance to beware of them.
Samuel Barnett and Victoria Yeates.
Photo credit: Ellie Kurttz.
Yeates herself swivels from schoolmistress to skittish: this Imo stands up to Ben’s bullying with rages of her own; but it’s sometimes too much for someone as unselfish as Ben is self-propelled, using people to serve his music. At moments Yeates seems primed to explode: with joy, a pent-up exuberance that’s almost frightening. Her Imo’s poised to dance (Holst’s dancing career was halted by illness) with a radiant drive in both face and gesture. A fierce love and single-mindedness makes Imo unforgettable.
What Yeates also brings though is Imo’s dedication to music as “an almost religious vocation” matching Ben’s. For Imo, beyond Ben’s squalls and doubts, there’s his genius and music. Ben knows Imo’s a composer too. “Not good enough,” she dismisses work that’s now undergone revival. Though Imo reminds Ben that without forgotten helpers, the music would be meaningless. If Britten inaugurated the Aldeburgh Festival in 1948, it’s Imo who convinces Britten where his gifts lie: with “a clique” Imo admits, but community art. Ben echoes her: “I’m not a national person I’m a local person.”
Against this runs the new role of large-scale publicly funded art and the accommodation of a private artist. What might now seem a halcyon period is deceptive: Ben’s work might prove a whipping-boy for voices against such funding. Through the fledgling Arts Council Harewood strong-arms Ben to produce Gloriana.
“Duty,” Ben declares to Imo, impels to him to it. Both feel it’ll fail, especially after the royal family show boredom at a private run-through. Ravenhill everywhere has Imo prophesy shrewdly: for instance Gloriana’s resurrection 40 years on. Imo’s insistence on arranging the courtly dances proves a hit rescued from the ruins. Yet several times she’s prepared to leave Ben. After a day when Ben writes 26 pages of music, Imo’s delight is scotched as her organizing strategy is icily terminated.
Ben indeed entices Imo to produce a shock at the interval. As the second act opens it’s Imo who rages at Ben’s lack of thought, leaving her stranded in a flood. It’s exclusion from being able to work, but also from an intimacy Ben shifts to others.
Indeed the way Yeates conveys Imo’s overhearing a rehearsal with soprano Joan Cross, with identical language used towards her, is something Imo’s prepared to deploy when Barnett’s icy Ben unleashes abuse that includes her father Gustav, whom he apparently reveres. Early on a “Uranus” chord from The Planets is wittily inserted by composer Conor Mitchell as Imo plays a juvenile symphony of Britten.
Soutra Gilmour’s period feel is expressed in a light-turquoise carpet. A yellowish-grey design of dour Utility chairs centres round the piano, lit by Charles Balfour with projections of a score on the balconies. Mitchell’s clever riffing of a few Gloriana chords and pastiches are given life by Connor Fogel’s piano playing (neatly synched by both actors), with a firm envelope from Carolyn Dowling’s sound design.
When this version first opened, Ben and Imo was just preceded by Kevin Kelly’s Turning the Screw at the King’s Head Theatre from February 2024; which literally takes up the story where Ravenhill leaves off. Intriguingly Imo now often references Britten’s next opera The Turn of the Screw which he’d planned but put aside for Gloriana.
Staged, Ben and Imo comes alive in ways anyone who heard the excellent (still available) radio play might never predict. History knows what happens next but Ravenhill convinces us an unrepeatable moment changes both artists. The visceral flaying of nerves and conscience, the way Imo fights back as we hurtle to a one-word conclusion, is Ravenhill at his best. And Ben and Imo is his finest play for years.
