Ben and Imo: Restoring the legacy of Imogen Holst

Waves crash out of sight; the wind whips up shingle and stirs buried secrets. On stage, the storm brews between Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst. It’s 1953, and England’s eminent composer is writing Gloriana, an opera to mark the new Elizabethan age.

Holst has been conscripted to help with the process, but her enthusiastic expertise is not welcomed. (“I never wanted you,” cuts Samuel Barnett’s Britten with icy honesty.) Holst (Victoria Yeates) is very jolly hockey sticks in the face of this unpleasantness, drawing on her experiences supporting her father, Gustav Holst, as she comforts another tortured genius.

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

Barnett and Yeates are magnetic in Mark Ravenhill’s Ben and Imo, the two-hander play that recently moved from Stratford’s Swan Theatre to Richmond’s Orange Tree Theatre. We surround a piano, scattered manuscript, a book. Barnett spits insults: “Gussie” was a second-rate composer; Imo should stop “prattling”. We’re immediately Team Holst.

It’s well documented that Britten and Holst – the titular Ben and Imo – had regular disagreements throughout their long collaboration. Were they as tempestuous as Ravenhill’s passionate dialogue suggests? Unlikely. It’s difficult to imagine someone as strait-laced as Britten employing such Malcolm Tucker-worthy insults.

Nor too, is it probable that Holst was as charming as Yeates’s excellent portrayal. If this was a Netflix drama, there might be a disclaimer that within this true story ‘scenes have been added for dramatic purposes’. As this is a play, no such addition is necessary; everything is at the service of drama.

While Britten has been featured in several stage shows (Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art, for example), Holst’s legacy is much quieter. She spent much of the war period teaching music and researching folk dance – something that is referenced in Ravenhill’s script, as Yeates demonstrates steps associated with a masque. After this nomadic existence – in the play, Britten asks where Holst’s things are, noticing the small suitcase she is carrying; she replies that she has everything she needs – Holst settled in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Her compact, modernist home, where she lived from 1964 until her death in 1984, has just been given Grade II-listed status, recognising both the distinctive architecture (designed by Jim and Betty Cadbury-Brown, the duo instrumental in creating the 1951 Festival of Britain Southbank site) and its notable resident. 

Read more:

• How classical music is taking cues from pop’s taste for retro
• Funding cuts in music education will destroy our cultural landscape
• Music is everywhere, including in our heads. So why is it so hard to describe?

The property features furniture owned by Gustav and one of the first sound-proofed music rooms. It is available for holiday rentals, with the unusual warning for prospective visitors that ‘Holst lived a frugal life, and the décor and furnishings of this unique accommodation has been left reflecting this … it is worth noting areas of living space are functional and somewhat sparse.’

This year’s Aldeburgh Festival (until 29 June) includes Songs of Illumination (27 June) setting Holst’s work alongside Britten and Daniel Kidane, and Around Britten in Brass (29 June), where quintet Onyx Brass will play Holst’s Leiston Suite and Fanfare for the Grenadier Guards.

Some historic women composers like Holst have waited decades for their contribution to be properly acknowledged. Others, such as Nannerl Mozart, wait centuries. Once more, a composer’s life is retold on stage – and this time she gets the full billing. Sylvia Milo’s The Other Mozart tells the story of Amadeus Mozart’s sister Maria Anna (known as Nannerl), also a dazzling virtuoso, who, like Fanny Mendelssohn,
has been overshadowed by her brilliant brother.

But Nannerl was also brilliant; she toured with Amadeus until social convention forced her back into domesticity. Following an off-Broadway run, Milo brings her one-woman play to the Edinburgh Fringe. The Other Mozart is performed in Assembly George Square Studios from 30 July-25 August (not 12 August).

Tickets for Ben and Imo are available now.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy of the magazine or get the app from the App Store or Google Play.