Possession - Mardi Gras 2026

Possession

The Substation

Another astute and gorgeously calibrated piece of programming from The Substation, Possession arrives like a flare in the dark: an operatic salon that is intimate in scale yet thunderous in ambition. Already sold out across its two-performance premiere, this second collaboration from mezzo-soprano Ruth Strutt, director Adam Player and pianist Michael Curtain makes a compelling case for a return season.

The premise is electrifying. Three legendary queer historical figures are conjured through music: the blazing martyrdom of Joan in Rossini’s Giovanna d’Arco, the aching lyricism of Donizetti’s Saffo, and the defiant militancy of Dame Ethel Smyth, whose compositions fuelled the British Suffragette movement. What could have been a recital becomes instead a dramaturgically shaped odyssey - a searing meditation on womanhood, agency, art and rebellion.

The Substation’s bunker-like architecture proves an inspired setting. The space holds sound with a kind of muscular containment; it feels both subterranean and sacred. The audience enters to find Strutt already present - utterly still, draped in a rich red cloth. She is icon and offering, monument and question mark. As Possession unfolds, the cloth gives way to a full sequinned gown: glamour revealed from austerity, spectacle born of sacrifice. It is a simple visual transformation, but in Player’s restrained direction it resonates powerfully.

Design elements are spare yet considered. A box functions as stage, altar, dock and barricade. Behind Strutt, the venue’s video wall projects imagery and surtitles, lending a contemporary edge that offsets the historical material. The use of projection never overwhelms; rather, it frames and contextualises. We are reminded that these women’s voices echo forward into our own moment.

What elevates Possession is its architecture of sound. Recorded spoken text threads between the arias - fragments of biography, declarations, reflections - creating a polyphonic texture in which music and memory collide. The spoken word is not explanatory filler; it operates as rupture and release, allowing Strutt to pivot from narrator to embodiment in an instant.  She is a terrific actor!

Vocally, Strutt is formidable. On the big stage she commands; up close she calibrates. There is no excess gesture, no indulgence. In Rossini’s Joan, the voice cuts bright and urgent, carrying a tensile steel that suggests faith weaponised. Donizetti’s Sappho brings a different colour: molten, bruised, suspended between ecstasy and annihilation. And in Smyth, Strutt unleashes something altogether more insurgent - rhythm sharpened, consonants biting, the music propelled by a political pulse.

Crucially, Michael Curtain is not mere accompanist but co-conspirator. His playing is muscular and alert, capable of swelling into orchestral grandeur before receding to a conspiratorial hush. The partnership between voice and piano feels lived-in and elastic, each responding to the other’s breath.

Director Adam Player resists operatic bombast in favour of clarity. The staging trusts the music, trusts the audience, and - most importantly - trusts Strutt. The result is a work that feels both distilled and expansive. In a time when opera can struggle to reconcile scale with intimacy, Possession offers a persuasive answer: shrink the orchestra, sharpen the dramaturgy, and let the voice blaze.

The evening becomes less a recital of arias than a reclamation. Joan, Sappho, Smyth - women historically mythologised, marginalised or misunderstood - are gathered not as relics but as living provocations. The title proves apt. These figures possess the stage; Strutt is possessed by them; and, by the final note, the audience feels possessed too - by music, by history, by the fierce insistence that art and rebellion are inseparable.

Sold out already, Possession deserves a longer life. In The Substation’s concrete cavern, opera finds not only resonance but revolution.

Review by Kate Gaul