Review: Sukanya at Southbank Centre, London

Sukanya

Southbank Centre, London

Director: Suba Das

Starring: Susanna Hurrell, Alok Kumar, Jonathan Lemalu, Michel De Souza and Njabulo Madlala

By Lauren Codling

TO honour the late Pandit Ravi Shankar’s birth centenary, the Southbank Centre have revived his first and only opera Sukanya as part of its Shankar 100 celebrations - a series of concerts and events to mark the occasion.

Described as a “love letter” to his wife, sitar maestro Shankar worked on Sukanya up until the final days of the life. Sadly, he passed away in 2012 before he was able to complete it. His wife, daughter Anoushka and Shankar’s close friend David Murphy helped to complete the opera, eventually staging it in 2017.

Taken from the famous Sanskrit texts of the epic Mahābhārata, in which the princess Sukanya marries a bereaved older man and twin demi-gods try and tempt her away, the staging is a tribute to Shankar’s determination to fuse Eastern and Western musical traditions together.

With an array of solo Indian instrumentalists, dancers and opera singers, as well as the sublime London Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Murphy, Sukanya succeeds in combining both cultures into one. The choreography by Gauri Diwakar is hauntingly beautiful and Susanna Hurrell, as the protagonist, is both convincingly graceful and heroic in her role.

However, the mainly English-language libretto does not offer much – it lacks poetry and at times, feels wooden. The staging was also slightly underwhelming – although the Southbank’s Royal Festival Hall remains one of the most magnificent theatres in London, it felt under used. The orchestra took up most of the stage, but Sukanya may have benefitted from more space for the cast to move. It all felt a little constricted.

The tribute to Shankar is heartfelt and stays true to his passion of creating a blend of diverse sounds and genres. However, there are instances when the performance could have soared – but instead fell flat.

We give Sukanya 3 out of 5 stars