Sometimes, the smallest gestures are those that matter most. A smile, a hand squeeze, a tentative step forward. These were the movements that brought James Joyce’s The Dead vividly to life in this production conceived for The Fourth Choir by director Séamus Rea, which saw a thoughtfully edited version of Joyce’s text (the final story in his collection The Dubliners) read by Niamh Cusack and interwoven with unaccompanied choral numbers. But “read” does Cusack a disservice. Her poise – moving with the rhythmic awareness of a dancer, drawing the singers around her into another world with only a script and a flight of stairs as props and scenery – was vital to this performance’s emotive power.
Joyce’s story unfolds at “the Misses Morkan’s annual dance”, a noisy, multigenerational gathering where the manners and memories of an older Ireland haunt the present. Music appears throughout: overheard, sung, discussed, remembered by the assembled company. A folk song, The Lass of Aughrim, triggers thoughts of a long-dead “delicate boy”. Sensitively arranged by the choir’s musical director, Jamie Powe, the number was sung, initially unaccompanied and offstage, by tenor Gareth Moss – one of several impressive step-out solos from this exceptionally polished LGBTQ+ chamber choir.
The rest of the evening’s music was sensitively chosen: mostly new or unfamiliar 20th- and 21st-century choral music, much of it gently melancholic and spiked with dissonance. Rhona Clarke’s Make We Merry was a rare moment of jauntiness, its syncopations snapping. Áine Mallon’s Dum Transisset Sabbatum showcased more solo voices, with two sopranos and an alto weaving eerie melismas against a carefully blended choral ground. Only Casta Diva from Bellini’s opera Norma, performed in duet with a black-and-white film of Maria Callas, sounded out of the choir’s comfort zone.
The dramatic arc was beautifully paced. Slow cascades of wordless notes in Bo Holten’s First Snow accompanied Cusack’s final lines, an ostinato circling like the snow in Joyce’s closing description, mournful and quiet. But then a final flurry of energy – and one last devastatingly simple gesture – as Cusack and the choir flung their script and music into the air, arms raised as the sheets fell slowly about them.
• Final performance on 15 January.
