A rich feast of poetry, symbolism & mime: The Music Troupe in Edward Lambert’s Lorca-inspired In Five Years’ Time

Edward Lambert: In Five Years’ Time – James Schouten, Chris Murphy – The Music Troupe (Photo: Claire Shovelton)

Edward Lambert: In Five Years’ Time; James Schouten, Rosalind Dobson, Mae Heydorn, Lucy Gibbs, Fiona Hymns, Jean-Max Lattemann, Chris Murphy, Thomas Stevenson, The Music Troupe, director: Walter Hall, music director: Alistair Burton; The Croft Hall, Hungerford
Reviewed by Chris de Souza, 1 March 2026

Turning the intimate space of the Croft Hall, Hungerford into a world of magic, The Music Troupe performs Edward Lambert’s In Five Years’ Time, a rich feast of poetry, symbolism and mime, where Lamberts music adds and draws out something extra from Federico García Lorca’s words

If you were looking for interesting music theatre, would you look in Hungerford? Perhaps you should, because from time to time Edward Lambert turns up with his company The Music Troupe at the Croft Hall, and turns the intimate space into a world of magic. Never more so than on March 1st when they presented their latest production In Five years Time. It’s based on a surrealist play by Federico García Lorca, whose complex dream-scape, once believed unstageable, Lambert has made into a beautiful precis of moonlit characters who inhabit a past, present and future at any moment.

This is something music can do better than any other art form, and something which Lambert thrives on. Lorca’s poetic symbolism of water and shadow and moonlight comes to life through the easy flow of his melodies, and the wide open harmonies they create in combination.

Edward Lambert: In Five Years’ Time – The Music Troupe (Photo: Claire Shovelton)

The story of an artist trying to find his inspiration until he is finally killed became horridly and uncannily prophetic of Lorca’s own life. He was murdered during the Spanish Civil War five years to the day after he signed and dated his playscript.

The artist hero here is Federico – Lorca himself we could suppose – in the fine lyric tenor of James Schouten. He scaled his fine voice down for the size of the Croft Hall without losing any of its heroic ring. As the character presenting his own drama, he occasionally steps outside in Pirandello fashion to speak to the audience but wondrously does not, as so many singers do, lose any of the vibrancy of his singing voice when he speaks. Federico puts of his marriage for five years – during which of course his fiancée becomes bored and goes off with another man – while his frustratedly enamoured assistant, Rosita, Fiona Hymns, had the difficult task of bringing a critical but generally absent character to life and did so with a warm expressivity, coming into her own towards the end when she turns the table and declares that she will marry him in five years.

All the other excellent members of the singers’ cast played two roles. Federico’s assorted friends turn up as a trio of commedia dell’arte characters, Pierrot, Columbine and Harlequin, whose adventures of love pepper the ongoing story of Federico. Jean-Max Lattemann’s cross-dressing Columbina has a beautifully modulated counter-tenor, which Lambert exploits in long lyrical lines. Chris Murphy creates a raffish Arlecchino, in parallel with the rakish drunken friend Juan, with a burly baritone. Thomas Stevensons’s bass-baritone completes the trio with a Pierrot whose musical range is as wide as his emotional one. The trio’s mimed movements brilliantly carried out, conveying us from scene to scene on a stage with no set at all, except for a wedding dress on a tailor’s dummy in some scenes.

Edward Lambert: In Five Years’ Time – The Music Troupe (Photo: Claire Shovelton)

Nothing is lost, though. The focus is on the words, and the actions
reflect them. The uniform costumes bring the manifold elements of the
story together. All except Federico and Rosita – the real people – are
costumed in convict-like pajama-clad inmates of an asylum, recalling
Weiss’s Marat/Sade. Indeed, there were other tropes and echoes in this
complex scheme. Federico’s fiancée Belisa has a wonderfully lyrical
scene on the telephone to her anonymous lover which recalls Poulenc’s La
Voix Humaine, itself an icon of the surrealist movement. Later as The
Mask of Countess we see her, and hear her warm mezzo, in a gondola – all
mimed of course – a mesmeric scene recalling but not sounding like
Offenbach’s barcarolle in The Tales of Hoffmann – Hoffmann the
grandfather of surrealism.

The other contrasting element in this intricately woven piece was the duo of Bridesmaids who also doubled as the dead Child and dead Cat. Love and Death again. Rosalind Dobson brought a lovely light soprano to her role as the Child, and Mae Heydorn a remarkably resonant deep contralto to the Cat. As they gestured and posed in their various roles we couldn’t help being reminded of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortileges or Rossini’s Cat-duet, in this wonderful celebration of music theatre. Like all the cast, we heard every word they uttered, thanks to the intimate acoustic of the Croft Hall, but also very much to Lambert’s skill in word setting, and composing singable lines. He calls it an opera in his score, but a drama in song on the playbill. It certainly is a drama, but the music adds and draws out something extra from Lorca’s words, and so I would declare it a real opera. If love and death are what characterise opera, then this certainly is.

Edward Lambert: In Five Years’ Time – The Music Troupe (Photo: Claire Shovelton)

This was a wonderfully rich feast of poetry, symbolism and mime, lifted by Edward Lambert’s music and served well by the clear direction of Walter Hall and the beautiful choreography of Jenny Weston. In Hungerford we heard the piece accompanied in a piano reduction of Lambert’s chamber orchestration, and no praise would be too high for music director Alistair Burton’s preparation, direction and keyboard skills.

I want to see it again. Meanwhile, look out for the Music Troupe’s next visit to Hungerford.

Reviewed by Chris de Souza – a composer, teacher, music director, broadcaster, opera producer and writer. He is a member of the Critics’ Circle