Nicola Lisle reports on a show with Oxford youngsters and their ‘twins’

Never work with children, they say. But Voirrey Carr, who is directing Benjamin Britten’s one-act opera Noye’s Fludde for Oxford International Links, has been working with 200 primary school children – and that’s just from Oxford.

There’s a further 90 from Oxford’s twin towns of Leiden and Bonn, not to mention adults from Bonn and Grenoble, some dancers from Perm, and adult and youth members of the East Oxford Community Choir.

The production opens tonight at the University Church, and continues tomorrow at Oxford Town Hall.

It sounds a massive undertaking, but Voirrey has clearly been loving every minute of it. “It’s probably one of the most challenging things I’ve ever been involved in, but it has been going well and there is a huge amount of enthusiasm from everybody involved,” she says. “So I think it will be a fantastic event.

“A lot of my work has involved finding the soloists, training the soloists, sorting out the primary schools and making sure they all had the right music.

“I also had to allocate animals to them, because we had a list of about 80 animals, which are all named, and because the animals go in two by two you can’t end up with too many of each one! Then the children went away and made their own masks.”

The project involves four local primary schools, with 100 children performing on each night.

For many of the children, it is their first experience of performing in public. “They have never been in a show before so they’re all incredibly excited,” Voirrey says.

It has also been a wonderful opportunity for six young performers to play the sons and daughters of Noye. 12-year-old Jacob Lewis, who plays Ham, has been singing with the Wantage Parish Church choir for four years, and earlier this year was awarded a bronze medal by the Royal Choral Society. Although he has sung solo at school and church events, this is his first major production.

“There is a part of me that is quite nervous for the performances, but above all I am very excited,” he says.

So how, I ask Voirrey, do you pull a production together when half of your performers are in different countries?

“The way we had to work it was everybody rehearsed each bit separately, and the whole thing came together in the last few days.

“It’s so clever, because when it’s all brought together it makes an amazingly complex, rich piece of writing. Britten was so clever at creating a very simple thing that even the most elementary singer or musician could sing or play, and yet create quite demanding parts for Mrs Noye, which I play, and Noye. He also gives quite exciting parts for the children, who get the opportunity to build the ark and create the storm, which is done both physically with waves and through the music.”

Wielding the baton for both performances will be John Lubbock, founder and conductor of the Orchestra of St John’s. “We’re pleased we’ve got him involved. I’ve been relying on him to bring things together in the final week!

“I really hope we can absolutely sell out in both the Town Hall and the University Church, because I don’t think there will ever be anything like this again.”

Where and when
Britten: Noye’s Fludde
Tonight 7pm at University Church of St Mary’s
Tomorrow 7pm at Oxford Town Hall 01865 305305 or ticketsoxford.com