The Turn of the Screw review – gripping and unsettling water-logged staging of Britten’s ghost story

Linbury theatre, London
Natalie Abrahami and Michael Levine’s imaginative production is brilliantly creepy and insightful. A first-rate cast of adults and children do not put a foot wrong

Are you sitting comfortably? Britten’s opera The Turn of the Screw begins with the tenor as storyteller, giving us the facts – something that will be in short supply later in this evasive ghost story. In the Royal Opera’s new production, this happens in absolute blackout. All the better to focus our attention on the words, you might think – but then, slowly, you realise that the singer is moving around in the darkness, impossible to pin down. Something is wrong. That’s one unsettling effect even before the lights have gone up – and there are many more in this insightful, brilliantly creepy staging by the director Natalie Abrahami and designer Michael Levine.

The set gives us the suggestion of a traditional country house: doors, beds, the Governess’s haunted desk. Duncan McLean’s videos appear on an otherwise invisible screen in front, often showing us faces from hidden viewpoints: the children gazing out of the window, excited to see their new governess arrive, but also secretly looking for someone else; Flora as she lies on her front on the jetty, dangling her doll in the lake and dipping her own face into the water.